Long Island saxophonist charged in fraud case


BY ROBERT E. KESSLER.robert.kessler@... 
September 7, 2007 




David Guardala is sort of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of the saxophone
world, according to federal prosecutors and some of those he is accused of
swindling.

As of yesterday, Guardala was in a Frankfurt, Germany, jail fighting
extradition to Long Island to face 12 counts of fraud. The charges were in
an indictment unsealed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Central Islip.

Federal prosecutors had requested that German authorities arrest Guardala
two weeks ago, following a joint investigation by inspectors from the U.S.
Postal Inspection Service and the FBI.


Starting out in his backyard in Hicksville in the '80s and later at a small
plant in Bay Shore, Guardala, a sax player with no formal manufacturing
training, developed and marketed the Guardala mouthpiece, which became a
sought-after standard of excellence. Renowned saxophonists such as Branford
Marsalis, as well as many teachers and weekend players, appreciated the
sound that Guardala's mouthpieces helped produce, according to federal
officials and saxophone enthusiasts.

In the mid-1990s, for undisclosed reasons, Guardala, now 48, gave up the Bay
Shore plant, moved into a posh hotel in Frankfurt and began to defraud
people, many of them acquaintances and friends from Long Island, according
to the indictment.

Among the 10 alleged victims, who lost a total of $660,000 since 2004, were
a retired music teacher in the Islip school system and a fellow saxophone
enthusiast who attended junior high with Guardala in Hicksville, the
indictment says.

The variety of schemes that Guardala used, all of which required the victims
to send him money up front, included the alleged purchase of rare saxophones
and bassoons, and the purchase of shares in a company he was setting up to
sell Vietnamese-made musical instruments in the United States, according to
court papers.

An attorney for Guardala could not be reached. The federal prosecutor in the
case, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Martin, declined to comment.

"It's really contemptible to cheat musicians you know who spend their life
devoted to the love of the saxophone," said Babylon attorney William Wexler,
who represents a number of Guardala's alleged victims from Long Island.

Wexler is a devotee of the saxophone, and one of the victims he represents
was his own saxophone teacher at Islip High School, Edward Centanni, 63, who
is retired but still plays weekend gigs on Long Island.

Centanni, who got to know Guardala when he purchased mouthpieces at the Bay
Shore plant, lost $93,000 in a fraudulent scheme Guardala devised supposedly
to distribute U.S. musical instruments in Europe, according to the
indictment.

Another alleged victim was saxophone player Tim Croan of Westbury, a
childhood friend of Guardala's, who later worked at the plant in Bay Shore.
Croan lost tens of thousands of dollars in two of Guardala's schemes, the
indictment says.

As a result of his dealings with Guardala, Croan said, "I still play, but I
don't get the same enjoyment out of it."

 

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