A twice-convicted felon who helped orchestrate a scheme to inflate the value of a small New Jersey delicatessen to more than $100 million was ordered to spend 21 months behind bars.
James Patten, 67, was sentenced Tuesday by US District Judge Christine P. O’Hearn in Camden, New Jersey, more than two years after he pleaded guilty to securities fraud and conspiracy in the case.
Patten and two others were charged in September 2022 with artificially inflating the price of two companies through manipulative trading, including Hometown International Inc. That company’s only asset was “Your Hometown Deli” in Paulsboro, New Jersey, just across the Delaware River from Philadelphia International Airport.
Hometown became infamous on Wall Street when David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital highlighted the company in an April 2021 letter to investors as an example of irrational exuberance in the market. Einhorn noted that the deli barely had sales of $20,000 in 2019 and even less in 2020 despite reaching a nine-figure valuation.
“The pastrami must be amazing,” Einhorn observed.
Patten, of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, pleaded guilty in December 2023, admitting that he worked with two other men, Peter L. Coker Sr. and Peter L. Coker Jr., to manipulate the companies’ stock prices through coordinated trading which created the false impression that there was real supply and demand for the shares.
Previous Conviction
Patten, who previously served time in federal prison for mail fraud, had faced as much as 20 years if convicted at trial over the deli scam. On Tuesday, he apologized for his actions and said he wanted to “express sincere remorse,” blaming himself for “failing to allow” his better judgment to take over.
According to his lawyer, Patten had worked for 25 years in financial services when he was convicted in 2010, and that after being he was released from prison, he was unemployable in the industry.
The judge said the deli scam was a sophisticated conspiracy that caused more than $5 million in losses for retail and institutional investors. While Patten received the least amount of proceeds from the scheme — a little more than $100,000 — “this was his idea, and he did it while he was still on supervised release” after his prior conviction, O’Hearn said.
“He certainly knew better,” the judge said. “This is not just, ‘one day I woke up and made a bad decision.'”
The sentence was more than the 12 to 18 months requested by prosecutors.
Harm to Markets
“This was a serious offense, and there were real victims,” Assistant US Attorney Aaron Webman told the judge before sentencing. He said such scams cause “harm to the financial system — to people’s faith and confidence in the markets.”
Defense attorney Adam Brody had sought a sentence with no prison time, saying Patten had accepted responsibility from the beginning and has tried to make amends for his poor choices. He also argued Coker Jr. was the most culpable in the scheme because without him and an unindicted co-conspirator, some of the institutional investors never would have invested.
The Cokers pleaded guilty a year after Patten in December 2024. Peter Coker Sr. was sentenced to six months in prison in May 2025, while his son received a similar sentence after credit for time served and good behavior at jails in New Jersey and Thailand.
Patten — a Paulsboro native — helped start the deli in October 2015 with a friend and wrestling coach at the town’s high school, but he soon began conspiring with the Cokers to create a public company that would serve as a reverse-merger vehicle, according to prosecutors and a parallel suit filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Hometown merged in March 2022 with Makamer Holdings, a bioplastics startup, selling the deli’s inventory for $700 and the store itself for $15,000, according to court filings.
The three men also used the same method to prop up the value of shares of Kent, Washington-based E-Waste, which merged with EZRaider Global Inc., a private Nevada corporation that purported to distribute electric tactical vehicles, in September 2021.
Your Hometown Deli shut down in August 2022.
The case is US v Patten, 22-cr-643, US District Court, District of New Jersey (Camden).
Top Photo: James Patten exits federal court in Camden, New Jersey on July 21. Bloomberg photo.
Topics New Jersey
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