Credit: Bucks County District Attorney’s Office
A conman who deceived an elderly Middletown Township couple out of nearly $320,000 was sent to state prison Thursday.
Marc A. Cheeseman, 50, of Silverdale Borough, on Thursday came before Bucks County Court of Common Pleas President Judge Wallace Bateman and was sentenced to five to 12 years behind bars after a chiding by the judge for not showing remorse for stealing the money from the elderly couple. He was ordered to serve a consecutive sentence of three years of probation and repay the money he stole, according to the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office.
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Cheeseman’s sentence also included unrelated cases of DUI from 2019 in Middletown Township and driving on a license suspended due to drunk driving at Core Creek Park in 2021.
In September 2022, Cheeseman pleaded guilty in the case before Bateman. He pleaded to several charges, including theft by false deception and misrepresentation of a member or veteran of the military.
Cheeseman convinced an elderly Middletown Township couple who met him through friends to turn over $319,882.65 over the course of several years. He told them he was a veteran and former union worker who had pension money held up, according to court papers.
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“You broke them,” Bateman said in court of the victims of Cheeseman’s financial scheme. “You stole not just their money, but you stole their future and their memories.”
“I think you are a shameless conman without a conscious.”
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At the guilty plea hearing last year, one of the victims spoke and said Cheeseman’s grift had left her and her husband without their life savings. She added the 50-year-old man is a “rotten person who would look you in the eyes and lie.”
After Cheeseman stole their money, the couple, who live in the Levittown section of the township, was not only out the money but also forced to sell valuable classic automobiles and other goods just to pay their taxes.
Cheeseman, according to one of the victims, didn’t just take their money, but he wrecked their 2013 F-150 after they let him borrow it.
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The elderly couple went to Middletown Township cops in November 2020 to report that they had been conned. The pair claimed to have given Cheeseman loans totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars from June 2017 until November 2020.
Officials said a detective found the couple authorized to Cheeseman taking the money after he gave them what turned out to be bogus documentation.
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Cheeseman relayed to the couple that he was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and had a U.S. Navy and District 1017 Carpenter’s Union pension. He claimed hardship by saying the funds were frozen and the money from them would help release his frozen pension funds, 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, confirming they were forged.
It was discovered through the investigation that Cheeseman had never served in the military or had been a part of a carpenter’s union. The investigation also revealed that Cheeseman had lost close to $167,000 at casinos
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The couple provided police with 20 documents, each with Cheeseman’s signature, indicating that he acknowledged the money was due for repayment.
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