Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
An Upper Bucks County man admitted to grifting a Middletown Township couple out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and lying about his military service.
Marc A. Cheeseman, 50, of Silverdale Borough, came before Bucks County Court of Common Pleas President Judge Wallace Bateman on Monday morning to plead guilty in the case. He pleaded guilty to several charges, including theft by false deception and misrepresentation of a member or veteran of the military.
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Sentencing was deferred by Bateman at the request of Cheeseman. The judge ordered a presentence investigation and psychological evaluation, while Cheeseman was remanded back to the Bucks County Correction Facility in Doylestown Township.
Cheeseman convinced an elderly Middletown Township couple who met him through friends to turn over $319,882.65 throughout several years. He told them he was a veteran and former union worker who had pension money held up, according to court papers.
One of the victims spoke before the court Monday stating Cheeseman’s con had left her and her husband penniless and ruined a legacy of savings.
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The woman called Cheeseman a “rotten person who would look you in the eyes and lie.”
“He robbed our family of everything we worked so hard for,” she said, noting her credit score fell greatly from its 800 peak.
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The couple not only were out the money, but they had to sell prized classic cars and other items just to pay their taxes after Cheeseman took their money.
The woman said not only did Cheeseman take their money, but he wrecked their 2013 F-150 after they let him borrow it.
In November 2020, the elderly couple went to the Middletown Township Police Department to report that they had been conned. The pair, who live in the Levittown section of the township, claimed to have given Cheeseman loans totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars from June 2017 until November 2020.
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According to court documents, the investigation revealed Cheeseman had received loans from the couple via cash, credit card purchases, wire transfers, personal checks, pawned jewelry and valuables, the proceeds from the sale of two classic cars, and the usage of an EZ-Pass.
According to officials, a detective discovered the couple allowed Cheeseman to take the money after he presented them with documents that turned out to be fake.
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Cheeseman told the couple he was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and had a U.S. Navy and District 1017 Carpenter’s Union pension, but the funds were frozen and the money would help release his pensions, authorities said.
The Internal Revenue Service, the “Superior Court of Philadelphia/And Or Pennsylvania,” the Bucks County Public Defender Office, Bank of America, and the “New Jersey Department of Taxation” were among the organizations named as having issued some of the fraudulent documents, according to the police.
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“Each of these documents were determined to be fraudulent and contained several spelling, grammar, and syntax errors,” police said, adding they were proven to be falsified documents.
The union Cheeseman claimed to be a member of, which is based in the Pacific Northwest, confirmed he had never been a member, according to police, who also found he had never been a member of the military.
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Detective Megan Freer discovered Cheeseman had lost $159,889 at Parx Casino in Bensalem Township and $6,939.27 at Valley Forge Casino in Montgomery County between 2017 to 2020, police said.
Cheeseman, through attorney Peter Williams, requested the delay on Monday in sentencing to give him more time to submit evidence about his character to the court.
The judge noted that Cheeseman’s own sister had written a letter to the court on behalf of the victims.
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On Monday, Cheeseman was also pleaded guilty to driving on a suspended license at Core Creek Park in 2021 and a 2019 Middletown Township DUI.
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