Couple gets coin tossed

Out $11M in pal’s ‘con’

A Long Island businessman who built a textile empire by peddling irregular sweaters at local flea markets thought he had a foolproof way to boost his assets — invest in a pal’s coin business. Bad move. Rocco Marini, 54, and his wife, Josephine, 50, took money from their kids’ trust funds to pull together nearly $17 million to buy 86 “rare’’ coins from buddy Harold Adamo Jr. (right) — only to learn the pieces were worth a fraction of that.

Among the pair’s coin purchases was a 1988 Morgan Silver Dollar that they bought from Adamo for $100,000. The coin turned out to be worth $200, according to court papers.

The couple, owners of T&R Knitting Mills in Glendale, eventually sued Adamo and forced him into bankruptcy, winning a $20 million judgment in 2014. That included the more than $11 million that the pair lost over the coins, which they began buying from their former longtime friend in 2002, the documents state.

But the Marinis have had no luck so far in collecting.

The Williston Park couple recently took the drastic step of targeting Hofstra University, Fairfield University and Brooklyn Law School to try to claw some of their money back — arguing that the total $246,000 that Adamo’s kids paid in tuition to the schools came from their father’s scheme.

“All this tuition was from his illgotten gains,” Josephine Marini fumed to The Post.

But Brooklyn federal court Judge Carla Craig last week sided with Adamo, ruling that his “children had no legal obligation to return the funds to their father” to give to the Marinis.

The kids “could have chosen to take a trip or go on a shopping spree’’ with Adamo’s money, and it couldn’t have been recovered then, either, Craig said.

After the ruling, Adamo, the Marinis’ former neighbor and godfather to their children, gloated that the bankruptcy trustee overseeing their case “lost, that motherf--ker.”

“I’m allowed to educate my kids in order to give them a better education so I don’t have to support them,” Adamo said.

“I hope you have a happy Easter. Bye bye, hon,” he said in finishing an interview with The Post.

Josephine Marini said she was “demoralized’’ by the ruling.

“It’s my belief that the bankruptcy court has shown little to no desire to hold Mr. Adamo accountable,” she said.