Wife of Forty Years, With Option to Keep Houses or Sell Them To Keep Husband Out of Prison, Sends Hubby to Slammer For 4-8 Years

By Debra Cassens Weiss

New Jersey Home $1.9 mil

Pennsylvania Home $500 k

A 69 year-old former Pennsylvania lawyer won’t get the benefits of a plea bargain to lessen his sentence for stealing from two clients because of his wife’s change of heart.

Ralph Mirarchi, who practiced law in Main Line, was sentenced yesterday to 4¼ to 8½ years in prison after his wife apparently refused to sell a New Jersey home put in her name, to help her husband repay $1.32 million to the victims, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Mirarchi, 69, has been in prison for about 15 months.

The wife, Dorothy "Dot" Mirarchi, 69, had agreed to help her husband of 40 years in a plea bargain last April that required her to sell the New Jersey home and another residence in Berwyn, Pa. Under the deal, Dorothy Mirarchi would have been allowed to keep $600,000 for living expenses, according to the Chester County prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Ost-Prisco.

But when the Berwyn home sold last fall, netting $500,000, she used the money to pay off her Lexus rather than the victims, Ost-Prisco told the Inquirer. The New Jersey home, originally listed at $1.9 million, was pulled from the market in February. Ost-Prisco added that he was not accusing Dorothy Mirarchi of any wrongdoing.