Free Republic

A former Hazleton polka band leader who defrauded fans and other investors in 22 states of millions of dollars is staying in a Scranton halfway house as he finishes his prison term, which is set to end next month. Jan Lewan is in the Community Corrections Management program of the federal Bureau of Prisons and due to be released April 16. While in a halfway house, inmates are expected to work as they prepare to return to life outside the prison system, Carla Wilson of the bureau’s northeast regional office in Philadelphia said. John F. Mikulak, a director of a...

SCRANTON - Calling the case "an American tragedy," a federal judge on Thursday sentenced world renowned polka musician Jan Lewandowski to 71 months in prison for a investment scheme bilking investors of millions. U.S. District Judge Thomas Vanaskie cited the amount of the loss and the impact on the victims for imposing the maximum sentence allowed under federal law. "You used the trappings of trust to convince them to invest," Vanaskie told Lewandowski, better known as Jan Lewan, as the 62-year-old stood before a courtroom filled with more than two dozen of his victims. "It was an expression of faith...

Hazleton polka musician is taken to Delaware jail. He was found guilty of a securities scheme. By TERRIE MORGAN-BESECKER tmorgan@leader.net Disgraced polka king Jan Lewan traded the glitz of the stage for the starkness of a prison cell Friday as he began serving a five-year prison sentence imposed that morning by a Delaware judge. The once beloved and trusted entertainer was led off to state prison after entering a plea to a racketeering charge Friday in Wilmington, the last of six charges leveled against him for an securities scheme that cost two Delaware families $87,000. The sentence ends the first...