Feds: Karoly faked wills

By Matt Birkbeck | Of The Morning Call

Two weeks after his brother Peter and sister-in-law were killed in a plane crash in February 2007, John P. Karoly Jr. learned he wasn't named as a beneficiary in their wills.

Karoly, a high-profile Lehigh Valley lawyer, requested a delay in probating the wills, claiming Peter and his wife, Dr. Lauren Angstadt, filed updated wills in 2006 that gave John Karoly a significant portion of their multimillion-dollar estate.

But the new wills were fraudulent, according to a federal grand jury in Philadelphia, which on Thursday indicted Karoly, 58, his son John ''J.P.'' Karoly III, 28, and Dr. John J. Shane, 72, charging them with taking part in a carefully crafted scheme to defraud the estates of Peter Karoly and Angstadt by using the phony wills.

''The defendants conspired in a fraudulent scheme to forge the wills of Peter Karoly and Lauren Angstadt in order to unlawfully benefit from their tragic deaths,'' said acting U.S. Attorney Laurie Magid in a prepared statement. ''Their actions were not only illegal, they subverted the true intentions of the victims.''

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