The cost of one man's fraud

Kathleen Mahon and her fiance saved money for years to celebrate their honeymoon in Ireland.

When they realized they could also afford to attend the 2005 Super Bowl six months before, they eagerly put down big bucks for that, too.

Their dreams came true, but not before they endured a costly nightmare.

The Mahons were among 41 people defrauded in a $230,000 scam by Michael Deppe, the 21-year-old from Hudson convicted last week in federal court for selling tickets he didn’t have to the New England Patriots-Philadelphia Eagles showdown in Jacksonville, Fla.

‘‘Thinking about it just makes me want to throw up,’’ Mahon, 39, of Huntington Valley, Pa., said last week.

Mahon’s story is similar to that of several other victims who testified in Deppe’s recent seven-day trial in Worcester.

A longtime Eagles fan, Mahon had been waiting for years to see her team in the playoffs. ‘‘All your life, you wait to go to a Super Bowl,’’ she said.

Mahon said she saw the tickets advertised on the Internet auction site eBay by AceProSports. She tried to buy four for $9,200 after a friend of hers vouched for AceProSports operator William Englehart, of Chester, N.Y.

When she couldn’t get the tickets online, Mahon called a phone number listed in the ad and got Deppe. At his suggestion, she wired the payment to Englehart. But the tickets didn’t arrive at her home as she was told they would.

Deppe assured her he would have the tickets in Florida. As she and her fiance had already spent $2,000 on airfare, hotel, and a rental car, they decided to chance it and fly down anyway.

Although Deppe did go to Florida, they never saw him or the tickets. As the Pats defeated the Eagles, Deppe sat in a jail cell not far away. In his rental car, police found $11,000 in cash and two tickets to the Super Bowl.

No charges have been brought against Englehart, who testified at the trial that Deppe duped him by taking the customers’ money and claiming to use it to buy the tickets.

At the last minute, Mahon managed to snag a pair of tickets, for $7,200 — money that had been earmarked for their honeymoon.

Mahon said they still went to Ireland but shortened the trip from two weeks to 10 days, switched to cheaper hotels, and cut back on other expenses.

‘‘We still enjoyed ourselves because we couldn’t let someone like [Deppe] put a downer on the one part of our life that’s so important,’’ she said. ‘‘But the whole time we were there, we thought about it. We still do.’’

Besides the credit card debt they are still paying off, the couple are now also saddled with cynicism. ‘‘I feel like we don’t trust anyone,’’ Mahon said.

Edward Miller, the friend who had vouched for Englehart, also purchased tickets through him and Deppe. But Miller was reimbursed $6,800 of the $11,000 he lost by the Internet financial service PayPal.

‘‘Their entire life, they’re going to remember that on their honeymoon’’ they got ripped off by Deppe, Miller said of the Mahons.

An indictment in March 2005 charged Deppe with committing fraud worth about $255,000 in the Super Bowl scam, but some of the money has been reimbursed by PayPal and Englehart.

Nobody has received a penny back from an earlier fraud in which Deppe sold sports memorabilia and luxury merchandise such as Rolex watches. In that case, Deppe was accused of defrauding 27 victims of $115,000. Deppe pleaded guilty in March to 10 wire and mail fraud charges in connection with the merchandise sales.

In that scheme, Brian Bell, a commercial pilot, was lured by Deppe into buying four Rolex watches in December 2004. The watches never came, and Bell was out $17,600.

That does not count the time and effort invested by Bell after he was tricked.

Bell, of Hilton Head, S.C., spent numerous hours on the Internet and telephone warning other prospective customers about Deppe. He also kept up a running barrage of phone calls to state and federal authorities, alerting them to Deppe’s dealings.

In addition to the emotional and financial costs to the victims, taxpayers have paid for Deppe’s crimes.

The price tag has included some of the salaries for the judges, prosecutors, and other employees of the Worcester district attorney’s office, Worcester Superior Court, the US Postal Inspection Service, the US attorney’s office, US District Court, and the US Marshals Service, which dealt with Deppe’s cases, and the jurors and witnesses who testified at his trial.

The federal government now will foot a final bill for Deppe. The average daily cost for an inmate in a federal prison is $64.19, according to Mike Truman, public affairs officer with the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington, D.C. Sometimes, Deppe has been housed in the Norfolk County jail in Dedham; the per diem there is $80.76, said spokesman David Falcone.

But some taxpayers say they don’t mind how long Deppe stays behind bars.

Miller said he plans to attend the sentencing hearing scheduled for August to give a victim impact statement. ‘‘I want the judge to give him the maximum time allowed by law,’’ he said.

Connie Paige can be reached at cpaige@globe.com.