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[ad_1] Peter Coker Jr., left, is issued search warrants from police at his villa on the southern resort island of Phuket, Thailand, Jan. 11, 2023. Crime Suppression Division, Royal Thai Police | AP NEWARK, N.J. – A former fugitive in the securities fraud case involving a New Jersey deli company once valued at $100 million renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2019, prosecutors revealed Thursday as they asked a judge to deny him bail. Peter Coker Jr. "poses a serious risk of flight, and ... there are no conditions or combination thereof that can assure his appearance at future proceedings," said the letter by the U.S. Attorney's Office to federal Magistrate Judge Edward Kiel. In the same letter, prosecutors said Coker Jr. had "stood to make tens of millions of dollars" from a hoped-for reverse merger of the deli company, which the goal of the "complex, long-term fraud' spanning at least seven years that grossly inflated its stock price. "And t...

[ad_1] Your Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, N.J. Google Earth A former fugitive wanted on criminal stock manipulation charges related to a money-losing New Jersey deli once valued at $100 million has agreed to be extradited from Thailand to the United States, Thai authorities said. Peter Coker Jr., 54, was arrested last week by Thai police in the resort area of Phuket, more than three months after he, his father, Peter Coker Sr., and an associate, James Patten, were indicted in New Jersey federal court. The 12-count complaint alleges financial crimes related to two publicly traded companies, Hometown International , which owned only a modest, now-closed deli in Paulsboro, New Jersey, and E-Waste , a shell company that had no assets. Coker Jr., an American who most recently was known to be living and working as a businessman in Hong Kong, is being held in a Bangkok jail for the next several weeks before his expected extradition, the Associated Press reported Friday. Thai police, in...