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Canadian fraudster's day parole has a catch: No selling used cars

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MONTREAL, June 23 (UPI) -- A Canadian parole board said it would grant day parole to an inmate with reputed Mafia ties on condition he refrain from going back to selling used cars.

Frank Martorana, 54, who was arrested in 2008 and pleaded guilty to rolling back odometers on cars for which he is serving a three-year prison sentence, had similar convictions in 1994 and 1996.

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Martorana was arrested five years ago as part of a police investigation into his family and three businesses he owned. The probe, known as Project Carwash, revealed Martorana rolled back the mileage indicators on hundreds of used cars he sold between 2006 and 2007.

Martorana netted $2 million out of the $6 million value of the fraud, The Gazette said.

Martorana's wife and two of his sons, who were also arrested in Project Carwash, were acquitted when he entered his guilty plea in December, the newspaper said.

Partly because Martorana's crime was non-violent, the two parole board commissioners who heard Martorana's case in Quebec at a minimum-security penitentiary decided to allow him day parole and determined he could eventually be released to a halfway house, The (Montreal) Gazette reported Saturday.

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Martorana had planned to return to being a used-car salesman while out on parole, but the parole board would not accept that. Further, the board prohibited him from communicating with people with a criminal record, the newspaper said.

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