Fulvio Joseph Gentili
Fulvio Joseph Gentili is a retired member of the Bars of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Florida and resides in Fort Myers, Florida. Fulvio is a 1969 graduate of Harvard College and a 1973 graduate of Boston College Law School and will be working for the Project on Predatory Student Lending. After law school, Fulvio first worked with firms practicing civil litigation and insurance defense and then worked in public service with the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office, as trial attorney with public agencies litigating cases before FCC, FERC and United States Court of Appeals (D.C. Circuit) and finally as Consumer Advocate for State of New Hampshire litigating utility cases before the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission and the New Hampshire Supreme Court. From 1982 to 2007, Fulvio was in private practice in Middlesex County, concentrating in civil litigation and real estate.
In 2007, Fulvio moved to Florida, passed the Florida Bar exam and began a decade of service until retirement in the Office of the Florida Attorney General, first as an Assistant Attorney General and then as Senior Assistant Attorney General/Attorney Supervisor in the Consumer Protection Division (f/k/a Economic Crimes Division), prosecuting civil violations of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
As an Assistant Attorney General, prosecutions led by Fulvio included a debt elimination scam, that resulted in $150 million in consumer restitution, and a human trafficking operation. The human trafficking case involved Filipino nationals who came to Florida under H2B visas to work as seasonal food service workers under signed contracts that represented to them that they would be working fulltime at Florida golf clubs for substantial salary plus free housing and transportation. Instead, the Filipinos worked for little or no wages, had their passports held hostage and found themselves warehoused in squalor with 20-40 people in a three-bedroom house with little edible food and with conditions so brutal that one worker opted to sleep in the garage next to the garbage. As a result of the state civil prosecution for deceptive practices, the U.S. Dept. of Justice and Dept. of Homeland Security/ICE initiated a criminal prosecution for immigration fraud and human trafficking. In December of 2010, the two principals behind this trafficking operation were sentenced to 4-year and 6-year terms of incarceration by the US District Court.
Fulvio also was one of two Florida Assistant Attorneys General involved in the MultiState Attorneys General Investigation of Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche for installation of electronic control modules in 2009-2016 model year VW, Audi and Porsche diesel motor vehicles. The devices increased emissions controls during legally required emissions tests in order to bring NOx emissions within legal limits and decreased emissions controls during regular driving, resulting in NOx emissions greater than EPA legal limits.
As an Access to Justice Fellow, Fulvio will partner with the Harvard Legal Services Center Project on Predatory Student Lending, a leading legal organization representing students against the predatory for-profit college industry and the policies that enable the industry to exploit the promise of higher education.