TOWN WATCH by Walter Elliott
IRVINGTON – A township man was among a local foursome arrested and charged by federal authorities Sept. 17 for running a fraudulent check cashing ring involving the U.S. Mail, man, 41, high school students and bank ATMs 2019-20.
Jeffrey Bennett, 28 plus Newarkers Jahaad Flip, 21 and Janel Blackman – who was a USPS employee – and Tashon Ragan, 21, of Hillside, were each charged with conspiracy to commit back fraud. Bennett and Ragan were also charged with aggravated identity theft; Flip and Ragan were charged with passing counterfeit Economic Impact Payment checks.
The quartet, said U.S. Attorney-New Jersey District Craig Carpenito, had run their Members ring Feb. 1, 2019-May 31, 2020. The Members would solicit postal workers to steal mail containing checks, checkbooks, debit and credit cards for cash.
The leaders would forge account holders’ signatures and make them payable to individuals – some of whom were high schoolers. The students and other accomplices would then deposit and cash the checks on ATMS before the banks could discover and decline the checks.
Flip and Ragan developed a sideline, since the U.S. CARES Act was enacted March 29, in depositing phony EIP checks. Each check carried at least $1,200 in credit for individual taxpayers or up to $2,400 for married couples who jointly file their income tax returns and up to $500 per qualifying child.
Carpenito thanked members of the Newark Police Division, South Orange Police Department, and police in Little Falls, New Providence, Piscataway and Summit – where the checks were deposited and cashed in bank ATMs. The USPS Inspector General’s Office and the IRS were also involved in the investigation.
NEWARK – A visitation and funeral for education advocate Ronnie Eugene Kellam, 28, has been respectively set for 10 and 11 a.m. here at Cotton Funeral Service, 1025 Bergen St., Oct. 6.
Kellam, said ECPO spokeswoman Katherine Carter Sept. 26, had died in University Hospital 12:30 that morning from injuries suffered from a crash between the vehicle he was driving and a pole along Irvine Turner Boulevard between Hawthorne Avenue and West Peddie Street around midnight.
Kellam and his passenger were in a car provided by Iron Rock Security, of Lakewood, when he lost control and struck the pole at high speed, entrapping them both. Both were freed but Kellam was declared dead at the scene while the passenger was rushed to University Hospital. It is not known whether they were on duty or were going to or from an assignment.
Kellam, when not on security duty, had last run for a Newark Public Schools Board of Education seat April 21. He ran then and in 2018 on his own “Power for Change” platform.
Born here May 13, 1993, the lifelong Newarker came to Malcolm X. Shabazz High School via George Washington Carver and Peshine Avenue elementary schools. The Class of 2011 President – for all four years – had meanwhile joined the Youth Media Symposium arm of Rutgers’ Abbott Leadership Institute.
Kelllam was a parent advocate in Parents Educating Parents, the Journey 4 Justice Alliance and at McKinley Avenue School, where his eight-year-old son is enrolled. The Roseville resident was a 32BJ SEIU shop steward, an Anti-Crime Partnership lieutenant a FEMA Hazmat Task Force/Strike Team leader and a constable for the City of Newark (2016-19) and Essex County – among other titles and qualifications.
“Local Talk News” remembers Kellam as a regular ALI class attendee, a well-prepared NPS BOE meeting public speaker, a local bus rider plus having an aimable and professional presence at the Board and Market McDonald’s and the 1 Ferry St. 7-Eleven.
EAST ORANGE – A city man, said authorities, has been arrested on Sept. 23 for a July 25 car crash, before a public school here, which has left his passenger disfigured.
Charles D. Sloan Jr., 33, said Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II and East Orange Public Safety Director Domingos Saldida, is being held in the Essex County Correctional Facility on a count of second degree DWI assault by auto, causing serious bodily injury, within 1,000 feet of a school crosswalk.
Sloan has also been charged with fourth-degree counts of assault by auto and causing SBI while operating a car on a suspended drivers license.
City first responders came to 120 Central Ave., better known as the Dionne Warwick Institute of Economics and Entrepreneurship, at 11:34 p.m. July 25. They found a white 2009 Honda Civic against a tree by the corner of South Maple Avenue – and driver Sloan and his 19-year-old front seat passenger trapped inside.
City firefighters extricated the pair and contracted medics rushed them to a local hospital. While both were admitted with serious leg injuries, the passenger underwent the partial amputation of one of his legs.
EOPD officers’ records check revealed that Sloan had a suspended MVC license. They also found “a nearly empty bottle of Hennessy cognac near the vehicle.” Sloan’s blood alcohol test came in at twice the legal limit.
ORANGE – Former State Assemblyman and high City of Orange official Willis Edwards III woke up Wednesday morning to having five more indictment charges against him by the U.S. Department of Justice overnight.
U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito unsealed a superseding indictment, recently handed down by a federal grand jury in Newark, against Edwards, 49, Sept. 29. These five counts are of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit thereof and taking kickbacks while as an official of a federal-funded municipality.
The counts are in addition to the 28 handed down July 7 – including his 2015 dealings with self-employed computer consultant Jeanmarie Zahore. Zahore, of New Providence, was indicted Aug. 18.
Edwards and Zahore remain accused of concocting a $350,000 “emergency” computer system replacement contract for the Freddie Polhill Law and Justice Complex in August-September 2015. Zahore, while working on the system into 2016, allegedly sent a cut of that contract back to Edwards from either his JZ Nettech checking account or in cash on or by Nov. 15, 2015.
Edwards, among other new Tuesday indictment revelations, did not tell the City Council at their Sept. 15, 2015 meeting that he had talked with Zahore the previous month. The Council approved the contract, as a late agenda item addition, 4-3.
Tuesday’s indictment account also included Edwards making “multiple demands and solicitations for payment” to Zahore. The contractor responded with two $10,000 cash paybacks, as “Gift WE,” Nov. 20 and 23, 2015.
Edwards allegedly conspired while as Orange’s “Deputy Business Administrator,” a post Mayor Dwayne Warren created after the council denied Edwards’ appointment as BA. in 2012. A court, citing the job title as not existing on Orange records, disbarred Edwards in 2016 and ordered him to pay the city back his $287,000 salary.
The new indictment is the latest development of the DOJ/FBI-Newark’s four-year-old investigation of Orange City Hall, public library and former YWCA financing and contracts. A former OPL director had pleaded guilty and a fourth person has been indicted as a result.
WEST ORANGE – A local Italian American advocacy group has taken the township government to court to get the latter’s Christopher Columbus monument reinstalled.
Returning the Columbus marker to its Valley neighborhood traffic island is part of the Italian American One Voice Coalition suit against Mayor Robert Parisi and the Township Council filed in U.S. Federal Court-Newark Sept. 15. Parisi’s order to remove the monument, asserts IAOVC Founder and President Dr. Manny Alfano, was a denial of Italian Americans’ equal protection under the law as stated in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
“The suit against West Orange serves as a warning to elected officials in every town, city and state that we’ll not stand by while they consider removing an important symbol of their heritage,” said Alfano, of Bloomfield. “We’ve tried everything we could to stop local officials from removing the Columbus statues. When they turned a deaf ear to our pleas, we were forced to defend our heritage by going to federal court.”
Parisi, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Maplewood’s Township Committee were among those local officials who removed their respective Columbus statuary and/or monuments as a precaution. Other Columbus markers in other locales had been defaced and/or toppled by crowds in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests since George Floyd’s May 25 murder by a Minneapolis police officer.
A second Newark Columbus statue was also taken down as a pre-emptive move. Petitions to remove or retain Columbus markers have been circulated in Orange, Bloomfield and Nutley.
“One Voice,” whose aim is to defend Italian American contributions and heritage while fighting stereotypes, has been around for at least 20 years. It publishes newsletters highlighting advances and controversies.
“Local Talk News” remembers going to several of its functions either at Bloomfield College or Bloomfield Civic Center in town. One event was the airing of a documentary of World War Two internment camps in Montana. Another was an annual Mille Grazie (1,000 Thanks) appraising and “Pasta-Tute” denunciation awards program
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – A two-town joint exploratory committee is to present an automatic fire response plan, the first step to the long-awaited joint fire department, before respective elders on Oct. 9.
The response plan, which members from each municipality have been collaborating on since Sept. 15, will direct which firehouse units of the Maplewood and South Orange fire departments respond when they get a call.
South Orange’s Board of Trustees, following Maplewood’s Township Committee’s Sept. 1 approving vote, approved the exploratory committee Sept. 14. This is the first development towards what is being called the “South Mountain Regional Fire Department” since the COVID-19 Novel Coronavirus pandemic froze the consolidation process in mid-March.
The regional department, to operate as a joint committee, has been formalized in the past two years – after some 20 years of discussion and evaluation.
The regional department, given the two towns’ history, is a reconsolidation. South Orange Township, to set itself apart from the Village of South Orange, was renamed Maplewood Nov. 7, 1922.
MONTCLAIR – The landlords advocacy group who had strived to get their public question referendum on the township rent control ordinance on the Nov. 3 ballot is regrouping for another petition drive in 2021.
The Montclair Property Owners Association spokesman Ron Simoncini and Township Attorney Ira Karasick separately confirmed that the petitions were delivered to Township Clerk Juliet Lee’s office Sept. 23.
Despite the petition having 1,530 electronic signatures – above the 15 percent of township registered voters’ signature minimum of 1,020 – its bid to make the Nov. 3 ballot was dead on arrival.
Karasick pointed out that municipal clerks need 20 days to verify the signatures and another 10 for the petitioners to “cure” any rejected signatures.
The up to 30-day process would therefore end on Oct. 23. Essex County officials have meanwhile posted and printed electronic sample and Vote By Mail Nov. 3 General Election ballots on or by Oct. 1.
MPOA, given its legal and logistical work the past month, will most likely begin a new petition drive. The failed drive was aided by the list of residents’ cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Beacham had ordered Montclair Township to turn over Sept. 3.
Karasick’s appeal, citing that the list was only for reverse 911 notices, was dismissed by Beacham Sept. 6. Beacham had granted the MPOA a stay on the township enacting its April 7 rent control ordinance on April 15 so the measure could be put up to a public question referendum.
MPOA can target either the scheduled next election, the first Tuesday in May, or ask for a special election within a 60 day window.
