Joseph Fulgenzi won’t be buying Jardine’s jazz club…he’s going to prison

• Joseph Fulgenzi, left, got in hot water when his “party lifestyle” affected his ability to pay his taxes.

Over a year ago, local real-estate agent Joseph Fulgenzi and his partner, Robert McCain, announced that they were interested in purchasing the shuttered jazz club, Jardine’s, on the Country Club Plaza. After discussing their proposed purchase of the venue with Fat City in December 2011, Fulgenzi and McCain continued to state that they were interested buyers, but no deal ever took place.

A different kind of deal took place for Fulgenzi on March 21 in a Western District of Missouri federal courtroom: U.S. District Judge Greg Kays sentenced Fulgenzi, 54, to three years and ten months in federal prison without parole and ordered him to pay more than $400,000 in restitution.