Ex-mortgage broker held in murder also accused in scam

A former Nesconset mortgage broker already accused of having his business partner killed was charged Tuesday with bilking clients out of tens of thousands of dollars.

Ronald Thornton, 38, has been held without bail on murder and conspiracy charges since his arrest in November for the death of James DiMartino. DiMartino, 44, who was also Thornton's attorney, was gunned down outside a Commack restaurant last year.

A new indictment unsealed in a Riverhead court charges Thornton with stealing $46,300 in 2006 and 2007 from clients who gave him money to pay debts and improve their credit, according to the Suffolk district attorney's office.

"In each instance, he was supposedly assisting the victims in refinancing their mortgages," said Assistant District Attorney Ming Liu Parson outside court. "In each instance, he took the money for his own purposes."

Thornton and DiMartino, friends who lived in the same neighborhood, opened a financial and real estate business earlier in the year before DiMartino was fatally shot on Oct. 20. Weeks later, Thornton was charged with murder and conspiracy for allegedly hiring a Queens stripper, her boyfriend, and another man to kill DiMartino.

Prosecutors have said little publicly about a possible motive behind the alleged murder-for-hire plot, saying only that Thornton had financial reasons for wanting DiMartino dead.

Before DiMartino was killed, Thornton was secretly informing for the district attorney's office on DiMartino, who Thornton claimed wanted to defraud clients, according to Thornton's attorney. At the time, DiMartino was also acting as Thornton's lawyer for a felony charge in Suffolk County stemming from an alleged real estate scam.

A Suffolk prosecutor later acknowledged that Thornton, "spun a web of lies" about DiMartino for investigators.

Thornton, who is being held without bail, appeared in court handcuffed in green jailhouse scrubs. He was silent as the charges were read. Outside court, his attorney, Glenn Obedin, dismissed the latest charges.

Glen Suarez of Huntington, the attorney for Kevin Sayer, one of the two victims listed in Tuesday's indictment, said Sayer is "still in a pickle" from the loss of $38,000.