Leesburg Attorney Christopher J. Agresto is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday, Feb. 24 for his involvement in an insurance scam following the death of Leesburg resident Susan Cilenti.
In 2009, Cilenti was found dead under suspicious circumstances in the Leesburg home she shared with her husband, James Cilenti. The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office opened a death investigation and James Cilenti was named a “person of interest.”
As a result, USAA, which had issued a $500K life insurance policy on the life of the late Mrs. Cilenti, declined to pay her husband, who was the primary beneficiary of the insurance policy.
Cilenti obtained the services of Agresto and together they devised a scheme to induce USAA, through materially false representations, to pay the insurance proceeds to a trust they created.
Based on Agresto’s false representations, which included that the funds would be spent only on the adopted daughter’s behalf, USAA wired $507,000 to the trust account. Agresto wrote more than $450,000 in checks and wire transfers to Cilenti, which Cilenti used for his own benefit, not his adopted daughter's.
Both men pleaded guilty to wire fraud in U.S. District Court last November. Cilenti was sentenced to 64 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release on Feb. 10. Agresto’s hearing will be this Friday at 9 a.m.
The money was Cilenti’s personal piggy bank, and he used the money he stole to fund airline tickets, wine, dating services, fancy dinners, and the repayment of purely personal loans. He spent more than $450,000 of the $507,000 wired to his daughter’s trust account. Agresto did not receive any money. I'll have an updated story later today.