The white-collar criminal hit with the harshest sentence in Rhode Island history is paying $300 a month toward the debt he owes the state — nearly $12 million.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Once-fugitive banker Joseph Mollicone Jr. might be 74 years old, but he's working two jobs as he continues to pay $300 a month toward the almost $12 million he owes to Rhode Island.

The man whose looting of Heritage Loan and Investment Co. triggered Rhode Island's plunge into the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression still owes Rhode Islanders $11,966,052.50, to be exact, according to the courts.

Mollicone is working as a real estate manager for a company in Connecticut and for another company that does historical renovations, state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Susan Perez said. She declined to identify his employers, saying that information isn't considered public.

Mollicone is divorced from Providence lawyer Katy Hynes, whom he married in 2006, according to the Department of Corrections. He met Hynes in the early 1990s when he was on trial and she served as a legal assistant to Mollicone’s lawyer, Robert B. Mann.

Mollicone, who lives at 175 Hoffman Ave., in Cranston, is to remain on parole through 2023, with two years of probation to serve after that, Perez said.

Mollicone has been faithfully paying $300 a month toward restitution for embezzling $13 million from the Federal Hill bank he inherited from his father. So far, he's paid $33,947.50 since he began making the payments in 2002, following his release from prison, court records show.

That's in addition to the $33 million in back taxes being sought by the Internal Revenue Service. In 2009, now-Chief U.S. District Judge William E. Smith gave the government the go-ahead to pursue unpaid taxes, penalties and interest from Mollicone’s days as the head of Heritage Loan. Smith’s ruling empowered the IRS to seize any assets held by Mollicone.

"How am I going to pay $30 million?" Mollicone said at the time. "I can’t pay them before I pay the state. I’m doing the best I can."

It's unclear where that matter stands, as the IRS doesn't release that information, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. There has been no movement in the court record since Smith handed down the judgment. Mollicone did not return several phone calls seeking comment.

One of Rhode Island's most notorious criminals for financial schemes that precipitated the state's banking crisis, Mollicone began looting the failed Heritage Loan as its president in 1986. The state attorney general's office put the sum Mollicone skimmed at $15.2 million, but he was prosecuted for only $12 million in losses.

Mollicone "bled" Heritage dry, prosecutor Kevin Bristow told the court at his trial. "He did it day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, year in and year out."

Mollicone's method of embezzlement was basic. He had employees write out Heritage checks in his name or in the name of one of his 90-odd businesses. He stole from friends, strangers, family. One out of every three state residents was hurt by his thievery.

He became legendary for dodging questions about missing bank records, once suggesting to a bank examiner: "Let's have a muffin."

He fled to Salt Lake City in November 1990 as his scam was on the verge of discovery. He assumed the name of John Fazioli, a childhood acquaintance who died just before Mollicone's flight, and lived under the persona of a Boston jewelry manufacturer who had come to Utah to ski and relax.

Meanwhile, Heritage failed. In a ripple effect, the entire Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corporation system, the private insurer for most of the state's credit unions, collapsed. Depositors were out hundreds of millions of dollars. The state eventually borrowed up to $350 million to reimburse them.

Mollicone surrendered in April 1992, leaving a bunch of unpaid bills and a live-in girlfriend to whom he had never revealed his identity.

It was Mollicone leaving his girlfriend on the brink of bankruptcy that still resonates with Bristow. "He just devastated her," Bristow said last week. "That says more about him than anything."

In April 1993, one year to the month after Mollicone surrendered, a jury convicted him of 26 counts of embezzlement, conspiracy and violation of banking laws.

Superior Court Judge Dominic F. Cresto imposed the harshest sentence ever meted out to a white-collar criminal in Rhode Island: 40 years in prison, with 30 years to serve, restitution of $12 million to the state, and a $420,000 fine.

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