Son of Bucks County socialite pleads guilty, forfeits Clairemont family estate

Feb. 16--Carl Risoldi, the son of the Bucks County socialite found guilty in a $20 million insurance fraud case earlier this month, pleaded guilty Friday to three related misdemeanor charges, including theft by deception and conspiracy, and was placed on four years’ probation.

As part of the plea agreement, Risoldi, 47, of Doylestown, agreed to forfeit his family’s Clairemont property, a 10-acre estate in New Hope that has served as the site of lavish fund-raisers for Bucks County Republicans. His mother, Claire Risoldi, 71, was found guilty Feb. 5 on six charges of insurance fraud, theft by deception, and receiving stolen property stemming from an October 2013 fire at Clairemont, the third at the home since June 2009. She has not yet been sentenced.

Her son was arrested in January 2015 following a grand jury investigation into the Risoldis’s efforts to defraud insurer AIG of $20 million in insurance proceeds, including $10 million for jewelry that the grand jury determined Claire Risoldi had falsely accused firefighters of stealing.

At the time, Carl Risoldi lived at Clairemont with his wife, Sheila, his mother, and her husband, Thomas French.

Carl Risoldi’s plea deal was approved by Chester County Court Senior Judge Thomas Gavin, who was assigned to the case because of the Risoldis’s close ties to Bucks County officials.

“This defendant and his co-conspirator Claire Risoldi, his mother, were focused on themselves and their excessive lifestyles, so much so that they broke the law and defrauded an insurance company out of millions of dollars," said Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro in a news release issued Saturday.

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