by Hugh McQuaid CTNewsJunkie
Michael DiMassa, a former Connecticut state representative convicted of embezzling COVID relief funding, was expected to report to a federal prison Monday in order to begin serving a 27-month sentence.
DiMassa, a former Democratic legislator and employee of the city of West Haven, pleaded guilty in 2022 to charges related to a conspiracy to steal more than $1.2 million in COVID relief funds from the city.
He had initially been scheduled to begin serving the prison sentence on July 31. However, Judge Omar A. Williams approved two separate delays to accommodate child care necessities for the DiMassa family.
The former lawmaker’s wife, Lauren Knox DiMassa, gave birth earlier this year while serving a six-month sentence on related charges. The judge approved requests to delay Michael DiMassa’s sentence and allow him to travel to Texas in order to return the couple’s newborn to Connecticut and care for the child until his wife was released from confinement.
Lauren Knox DiMassa was released from prison in late-October, when she began serving a six-month period of home detention.
Michael DiMassa first took office as a state representative in 2017. He also worked as an administrative assistant to West Haven’s city council. He resigned from both positions after his arrest in 2021.
Federal law enforcement officials argued that DiMassa and others fraudulently billed West Haven for COVID-related work that was never completed. In addition to the 27-month prison sentence, the judge has ordered Michael DiMassa to pay $856,844.45 in restitution.
Prosecutors said DiMassa and a co-defendant, John Bernardo, founded a consulting firm, Compass Investment Group, LLC, to which the city paid more than $630,000 for work that was never performed. In court documents, they alleged that DiMassa spent more than $50,000 on casino chips at Mohegan Sun before and after making transactions from the Compass account.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, West Haven paid Lauren DiMassa nearly $148,000 for supplies and services related to youth programs, which she never provided.
Bernardo and both DiMassas pleaded guilty to the charges. However, a third defendant, John Trasacco, received an eight-year prison sentence after a jury found him guilty of one count of related wire fraud.