PHILADELPHIA – A Philadelphia man who authorities say stole the identities of eight Lehigh Valley residents to rack up $88,000 of bills in their names, partly to buy penis enlargements for him and a friend and breast implants for two women, could serve nearly two decades behind bars.
Lehigh County Judge Maria L. Dantos sentenced Jose Amid Juarbe to 4 to 18 years in state prison Tuesday. She also ordered him to make minimum monthly payments of $300 a month once he’s released to repay all the stolen money.
Juarbe, 40, told the judge many others benefited from the products that were purchased with the stolen money and he needed the penis enlargement surgery to properly function.
”People think that because I’m gay, I don’t have to have my parts working,” he told the judge.
Also Tuesday, one of Juarbe’s co-defendants who had penis enlargement surgery with the stolen money was placed on a program for first-time offenders.
Juarbe pleaded guilty in August to 42 counts including identity theft, writing bad checks, forgery and theft by deception. Twenty-seven of the counts are felonies. Assistant District Attorney Anna-Kristie Morffi said Juarbe has 26 prior convictions, 17 of which are thefts. She said he’s also used 23 aliases.
Juarbe, according to authorities, used information stolen from Dino Melendez Realty Co. in Allentown to steal identities in the Lehigh Valley and make more than $88,000 in purchases and loans between September 2007 and January 2008. That, according to police, included four plastic surgeries: a penis enlargement for him and another man, 30-year-old Manuel Delarosa of Philadelphia; and breast enhancement surgeries for two women, 26-year-old Maria Lopez and 33-year-old Bedenissi Feliciano, both of Philadelphia.
Police say Juarbe provided the stolen identities the man and two women used to get the surgeries and all three have been charged with theft crimes.
Delarosa on Tuesday was placed in the county’s Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program for two years by Lehigh County President Judge William H. Platt and was ordered to pay $12,000 in restitution for his enhancement surgery. Delarosa, who has no prior criminal convictions, could have his record expunged if he successfully completes the program, which is essentially a probationary period.
The cases against Lopez and Feliciano are pending. Both have hearings scheduled for next month.
Juarbe also purchased furniture and motorcycles with the stolen money, according to authorities.
Police allege a former Allentown woman, 25-year-old Carniola Santana, sold Juarbe the personal information from customers of the real estate company. Santana, who now has a New York City address, is awaiting trial on 14 charges of conspiracy and identity theft.
from The Morning Call

COSTA MESA, CALIFORNIA – In what firefighters described as a once-in-a-lifetime call, officials with the Costa Mesa Fire Department’s Urban Search and Rescue squad were summoned early Tuesday morning to Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach to save another man’s penis from perishing.
The man, whom authorities declined to identify, other than saying that he was in his 50s, had apparently put his penis through the hole of a steel, ring-shaped dumbbell weight fastener, two or three days earlier.
The device got stuck, and he couldn’t remove it. The penis had blackened and swollen to five times its normal size, authorities said. In order to remove the ring, firefighters had to use a saw to cut through it.
“They said his comment was, ‘This will make me the chief of my tribe,’” said Costa Mesa Battalion Chief Scott Broussard, who like others in the department, heard about the incident the next morning.
The man thought the weight from the steel object would make his organ longer, but what he did to it almost rendered it useless, authorities said.
The steel collar-like fastener cut off circulation to the man’s penis, said Capt. Dave Kearley. As a result, blood could not flow out of it, and it swelled to the point that the man couldn’t remove the ring, Kearley said.
Broussard added that doctors at Hoag had told the man, who refused immediate treatment, that if he waited any longer to remove the fastener, the flesh in his penis would die.
“He was kind of a wingnut,” Broussard said.
Staff kept him in the hospital under a psychiatric hold and called the Fire Department to come remove the item because they didn’t have the tools to do it, Broussard said. Medical personnel tied down the man to a table and sedated him for the emergency, he said.
Firefighters had to don full surgery garb, including masks and scrubs.
The men constructed a watering system to keep the sparks from the sawing — which were flying half-way across the room — from injuring the patient as they cut through the inch-thick ring around his penis.
The delicate procedure took two hours.
“They also slid a little piece of metal between the collar and his thing, so if it slipped past it wouldn’t hit his thing,” Broussard said.
If anything, the incident demonstrated the versatility of the city firefighters’ rescue skills, Broussard said.
“If we’re cutting people out of some kind of building, or if we’re cutting right up next to somebody’s flesh and don’t damage his flesh, then it’s a good day,” he said.
from The Daily Pilot