Coroner: Accused Swindler a Suicide

Luigi DiFonzo, who died two months ago amid accusations that he swindled investors out of $40 million, used prescription drugs to commit suicide, according to an autopsy report released Friday by the Orange County sheriff-coroner’s office.

But the widow of DiFonzo immediately decried the results and said she would challenge them.

“There were a million different ways he could have died,” Brenda DiFonzo said in an interview Friday. “I’m not going to let them shove him under the rug.”

DiFonzo, 53, was found dead in his home the evening of Aug. 14, just hours after a judge awarded legal possession of his $5-million Laguna Niguel home to a court-appointed trustee in the bankruptcy of his DFJ Italia investment firm.

DiFonzo was the target of federal probes stemming from allegations that his company bilked 700 investors nationwide through DFJ Italia, which closed in March. Authorities allege that DFJ operated a Ponzi scheme that used some of the money from new investors to pay off earlier ones.

Unknown to investors, DiFonzo was a felon. He had pleaded guilty in 1978 to submitting false financial documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in an attempt to make his Chicago investment company appear more solvent, records show.

According to the autopsy report, DiFonzo took his own life with a mixture of prescription pills. The report also revealed that DiFonzo had kidney cancer. He had also been diagnosed with heart disease.

Brenda DiFonzo said that as far as she knew, her husband didn’t know he had cancer. Describing herself as “livid” about the coroner’s conclusion, she asserted that the autopsy “was obviously done incorrectly.” She said she and her husband’s physician would dispute the findings.

The autopsy found that DiFonzo’s system contained morphine, venlafaxine, propanolol and alprazolam. Those are, respectively, a painkiller, an anti-depressant, a heart medication and an anti-panic drug, said Paul Weingarten, a senior UC Irvine graduate student in pharmacology.

Brenda DiFonzo said all of the medications had been prescribed for her husband and were not found in particularly unusual doses. She said her husband had excruciating back pain for weeks before his death, which she now believes may have been caused by the undiagnosed cancer.

Earlier this year, five DFJ Italia investors filed claims to force DFJ into bankruptcy liquidation. Investors, including high-profile athletes such as former Los Angeles Rams running back Eric Dickerson, who invested $100,000, were told their money would be used to buy precious metals and to profit from European currency trading.

But attorneys for the investors say DFJ executives spent the money on mansions, cars and jewelry.

Costa Mesa lawyer Steven Katzman, who represents the trustee in attempting to recover assets for the victims, said much of the money taken from investors is gone.

Most of the assets have been spent on items that are either disposable, such as a $1-million Hawaii trip, or items that lose value, such as cars, Katzman said. “I think we’ve been very aggressive and very successful in gathering what we can.”

From the standpoint of investors, Katzman said, DiFonzo’s death did not affect the case “because he wasn’t cooperating anyway.”