Former Councilor Scatamacchia Now at Prison Pre-Release ‘Farm’

Former Haverhill City Council Vice President Robert H. Scatamacchia, serving a one-year prison sentence for stealing funeral prepayment money, is at the “Farm”—the Essex County Sheriff’s Department’s Pre-release and Re-entry Center, Lawrence.

The center, on a 13-acre site off Marston Street, Lawrence, is for “Offenders who have completed their mandatory rehabilitative programs and are on the verge of being released,” according to the sheriff’s department.

“He is here,” confirmed an officer reached by telephone at the center.

Barbara Maher, chief financial officer and spokesperson for Essex County Sheriff Frank G. Cousins said the decision to release prisoners to the center is up to a board of sheriff’s department officials. Members include heads of security, programs, housing, victims and classification.

“They are eligible for good time, depending on their needs,” Maher told WHAV. While the formula is different for each prisoner, she said, sentences may be reduced for good conduct up to 10 days per month.

Scatamacchia, 66, was sentenced July 19 by Judge Mary K. Ames to two and a half years in the state house of correction, with one year to be served and the balance suspended with probation for five years. Scatamacchia will also have to make restitution of $144,000 to the victims—both families who had pre-paid for funerals and his former business partners.

According to First Assistant District Attorney John T. Dawley, Scatamacchia took as much as $244,000 in funds from funeral “pre-need contracts,” with as many as 22 people between July, 2010 and 2014, after the former Scatamacchia Funeral Home merged with Paul C. Rogers Family-Carnevale Funeral Home, 334 Main St. The money, he said, was “never placed in trust” but taken from a bank account named under “Scatamacchia Funeral Home” while that business was no longer in operation. He added Scatamacchia used an office typewriter to “make entries in a passbook” which was not credited by a bank. “Clients paid…for pre-paid services and there was no record of the money anywhere,” Dawley said.

“It’s a terribly embarrassing thing to go through. I’m so sorry that it ever happened. And I don’t know what else to say other than, I hope that they can forgive me,” Scatamacchia told Ames before sentencing.

Separately, Scatamacchia claims he was improperly fired from his position as Haverhill’s school transportation chief and wants back pay.

Back in March, 2015, Haverhill Public Schools Superintendent James F. Scully reported Scatamacchia’s “resignation” from the $60,000 position of school transportation supervisor. WHAV News learned Scatamacchia was actually fired from the union-protected job he accepted only four months earlier.

“It’s a personnel matter and I cannot discuss it,” Mayor James J. Fiorentini, who is also chairman of the Haverhill School Committee, told WHAV in July.

8 thoughts on “Former Councilor Scatamacchia Now at Prison Pre-Release ‘Farm’

  1. First, county time is house of correction time not “prison” time, but that’s splitting hairs.

    Second, he’s no Jim Flaherty. He quietly helped people who were screwed by someone else for whom het was not legally responsible, in the early 2000s, and it was not without financial cost.

  2. He only has to repay a portion of the money he stole, and do a fraction of the time he was sentenced too. Who else would get this kid glove treatment? At least he shows remorse, by being “embarrassed”. The crew from Goodfellas didn’t have it this good.

    • Who else?
      Is that meant as a joke?
      Try 29 Haverhill fire fighters who committed a felony by conspiring with each other to steal over $54,000.00 from the taxpayers of Haverhill for starters.

  3. It’s a “good time” all right !!
    Word has it members of the breakfast crew at Mark’s Deli have already swung by for a visit and dropped off some veal parm from Borelli’s. Before you know it Bob will be sharing coffee and donuts with other Haverhill thieves Jim Flaherty and mayor Taxman like nothing ever happened.

    The guy steals a quarter of a million dollars and the only thing he can say is how “embarrassed” he is. Spoken like a true Massachusetts liberal political hack.