New Haven Businessman Helped ‘Sell’ Gifting Tables
Joel Schiavone, a well-known New Haven buisnessman, extolled the virtues of the Women’s Gifting Table to table members and volunteered to talk to people questioning the group, according to court testimony.
Two women who participated in tables and testified in a federal trial Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Hartford recalled seeing Schiavone at a meeting with his wife, Donna Bello.
Bello and Jill Platt, both of Guilford, are on trial for acting as leaders of the alleged pyramid scheme and defrauding the IRS and table members.
“Joel spoke at one meeting and offered to speak to our business partners or husbands if they have questions. … At the meeting, he stood up and was very theatrical and gave a credentialing of his own successes, almost like that was why we should believe him,” said Kathryn Midgley, a past participant who made more than $20,000 on the tables.