Bankruptcy judge to discuss personal finance lessons at Whitman School

Bankruptcy judge to discuss personal finance lessons at Whitman School February 21, 2006Amy Schmitzaemehrin@syr.edu

The Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University will host a lecture by John C. Ninfo II, chief judge of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of New York. Ninfo is the founder of the Credit Abuse Resistance Education (C.A.R.E.) Program, which teaches high school and college students personal finance skills, particularly wise use of credit. The event will take place Feb. 27 at 7 p.m. in Lender Auditorium, located on the concourse level of the Whitman building. The lecture is free and open to the public.

“Very often, college students and other select groups are targeted as easy prey for credit card companies,” says Mitch Franklin, assistant professor of accounting in the Whitman School. “With the changing bankruptcy laws and various tactics by creditors designed to attract the unsuspecting and vulnerable, it’s important that everyone have a basic working knowledge of how credit works and the costs that are associated with falling into the traps that the credit card companies set.”

Judge Ninfo earned a B.S. degree at Georgetown University in 1968 and spent two years serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he was chief legal clerk to the judge advocate general of the 4th Marine Air Wing. He received his J.D. from Boston University School of Law in 1973. Until 1992, he practiced law with Underberg and Kessler in Rochester, N.Y., where he was a partner specializing in creditors’ rights and bankruptcy law. He was appointed to the bench in 1992 and became chief judge in 2000. He founded C.A.R.E. in 2002 in partnership with the Bankruptcy Committee of the Monroe County Bar.