By Walter Elliott
ORANGE – It has been over five years since federal agents, armed with search warrants, retrieved records from Orange City Hall. The event and subsequent investigation have rippled through the city and its operations ever since.
Agents from the FBI-Newark office, the IRS and the Department of Housing and Urban Development Inspector General’s Office descended on 29 North Day St. just as City Hall was opening for a normal business day 8:30 a.m. Jan. 11, 2017.
The agents, with warrants signed by a U.S. Magistrate judge in Newark Jan. 10, loaded legal boxes full of paper and electronic records into 24 vehicles parked in the employees’ parking lot. Some of that transfer was witnessed by four television crews and a newspaper reporter once they had learned of the transaction.
That Jan. 11, 2017 raid was preceded by one served on the Orange Public Library July 22, 2016 – which was executed without media fanfare. While federal investigators descending on a town hall in New Jersey is not unusual, the one on a public library was unheard of.
The FBI, both times, would only confirm that they were “conducting official business.” The respective library and city hall reopened to the public the next business day while “The Feds” scoured the collected material in their Newark offices.
FBI-Newark had also served subpoenas on City Hall Nov. 29, 2018. Officials there, like in previous servings here and OPL, said they had complied with the feds’ requests.
Federal investigators’ scope included contracting and financing in City Hall, OPL, the Orange Water Utility, the Freddie Polhill Law and Justice Complex and the Orange YWCA/Orange Recreation, Educational and Cultural Center.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s attorneys are still conducting their investigation. Their probe has so far yielded four guilty pleas.
Contractor Franklyn D. Ore, 51, of Jersey City, pleaded guilty in Newark federal court Jan. 13, 2020 to a count each of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aiding and abetting the fraud of an organization that uses federal funds. He is currently serving an up to 20 year federal prison sentence.
Former OPL director Timur Davis, of Newark, pleaded guilty to making false statements to USHUD Feb. 13, 2020. He was scheduled to be sentenced that June to up to the maximum of a year’s imprisonment and a $100,000 fine.
Tax preparer Zenobia Williams, 52, of Maplewood, pleaded guilty Dec. 30, 2019 to conspiring to defraud the IRS by filing a false 2015 tax return for a client who was involved with the above and below allegations. She was facing up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Computer service vendor Jeanmarie Zahore, 56, of Rahway, pleaded guilty Oct. 21, 2020 to a count of making corrupt payments “to an agent of a local government receiving federal funds.” He was facing an up to a 10 year sentence and a $250,000 fine on March 3, 2021.
There has been one arrest from an indictment.
Electrical vendor and mortgage broker Shenandoah “Shane” Adams, Sr., 54, of New Providence, was arrested Feb. 27, 2020 on six counts of “scheming to defraud by wire” and mortgage fraud the day after a federal grand jury’s indictment was unsealed.
Adams faces up to 20 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
One man pleaded “not guilty” the same day of his April 16, 2021 indictment.
Term paper writer Isaac Newton, 53, of Loganville, Ga. pleaded not guilty to nine mail and wire fraud and conspiracy after he had surrendered to federal authorities in Atlanta. Newton, who was released on $100,000 bail, is facing up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, if found guilty, per count.
One former “high Orange public official,” after a pair of July 8 and Sept. 20, 2020 indictments, faces 31 various counts, ranging from “bribery in connection with the business of a federally funded local government” to wire fraud.
Willis Edwards III, 51, now of Lithonia, Ga., has not entered a plea. The former East Orange resident and one-term N.J. General Assemblyman, if found guilty and given the maximum on all counts, faces 118 years in prison and $2.5 million in fines.
Edwards, while in his City Hall office 2012-15, is accused of soliciting and receiving bribes and kickbacks for inflated or unfulfilled contracts on Orange’s dime. He is also accused of falsifying or approving false invoices, bills, term papers, tax returns and other documentation sent to the U.S., Essex County and City of Orange Township governments.
Edwards is accused of sending two voucher payment requests to Essex County in March and May 2015 for the library’s Saturday Literacy Program. The county, using funds from a $50,000 US HUD grant, reimbursed OPL. The library paid Edwards (the city) and Ore (Urban Partners LLC) $36,000 from that grant that April and June.
The program, to be run by Ore’s Urban Partners, never happened. Ore, according to court documents, incorporated the entity with an advance from Edwards and passed on his phony invoices to him. The City Hall official then billed OPL $36,000 in August for Urban Partners’ non-work.
Davis had pleaded guilty in signing onto the above $36,000 payment to Ore and Edwards. He also pleaded guilty for his part in Edwards and Adams respectively obtained a $48,000 HUD grant and fake project quotes for an HVAC chiller unit – that was never installed.
Edwards had allegedly arranged Orange’s planning firm, The Nishuane Group, to hire Ore’s Urban Partners in 2015 to work on the Central Orange Redevelopment Area project. Nishuane drew $33,220 of its $150,000 city contract to pay Urban Partners August 2015-February 2016. Ore then supposedly paid Edwards kickbacks.
One of Edwards’ last acts in office was to alert Ore in December 2015 that he had access to the city’s discretionary fund. that was to expire Dec. 31. Ore created a false invoice that Urban Partners had worked on the YWCA/Orange REC redevelopment study. The city cut a $16,800 check to Ore – part of which was kicked back to Edwards.
Edwards is accused of conspiring with Williams in filing a false 2015 federal tax return in early 2016. The city official claimed that his Natural Care Municipal Cleaning business, with the tax preparer’s approval, had $27,055 in labor expenses.
Natural Care had contracts with a law firm, a local board of education and OPL. The U.S. Department of Justice-New Jersey District added that Edwards had not listed gains from the Saturday Literacy Program nor the redevelopment and YWCA/Orange REC projects.
The Orange City Council, in a 4-3 split vote Sept. 15, 2015, an emergency noncompetitive $350,000 contract to Zahore’s JZNettech to service the Polhill Law and Justice complex. Edwards, who said that the Police Department and Municipal Court needed a computers system upgrade, walked the late-starting contract onto the council agenda the day before.
Zahore, “at Edwards’ instruction,” submitted a $115,000 invoice for services to the city Sept. 18, 2015. The billing allowed JZNettech to buy the supplies and equipment needed to start the upgrade. The city does not normally pre-pay vendors in advance so they can purchase project materials.
Zahore, under testimony, said that Edwards told him in October that he had helped the vendor with the contract and the advance – and that should be considered. The vendor responded by handing Edwards two cash payments of $10,000 in November.
Zahore, to date, is the only defendant to use Edwards’ name in testimony.
Edwards had the city pay Newton $38,000 for “professional services” while he was pursuing a master’s degree at a New Jersey university June 2015-2016. Those services included paying Newton in December 2015 and March 2016 for academic papers that he submitted to his professors as his own work.
The indictment includes an out-of-office Edwards, on Feb. 10, 2016, had “Orange Employee No. 1” in the city’s finance department backdate a fraudulent graduate studies reimbursement approval letter to Aug. 17, 2015. Orange paid Edwards $25,142 – his prosecutors said he pocketed.
To make that happen, however, Edwards directed Employee 1 to send the false letter via email to “Orange Employee No. 2- a senior official in the Office of the Mayor.” Employee 2 returned to Employee 1 with a copy of the said letter “on Orange letterhead” and “bore the stamp and initials of the Mayor.”
Edwards and Adams furthermore, are accused of getting mortgage payment assistance on an East Orange property the former fell behind in payments on in Feb. 11, 2014. He had submitted a payment assistance request to April 7, 2014 to his mortgage servicer Adams, saying that the City of Orange is his sole employer. Edwards did not list on his application, that he was a $45,000 adjunct instructor for “a New Jersey County College.”
Edwards and Adams entered a Home Affordable Modification Agreement Oct. 8, 2014. The agreement led to the July 2015 $95,590 worth of debt forgiven and the July 2017 removal of Edwards’ property from the foreclosure rolls. Adams had also called an out-of-state mortgage servicer with Edwards’ faulty information.
Please note that neither Mayor Dwayne D. Warren nor The Nishuane Group are accused of wrongdoing as of press time. Investigators have been looking at seven other “persons of interest” who may or may not be charged in the future.
Edwards, outside of the indictments, declared Chapter 13 personal bankruptcy in January 2013. He cited “tens of thousands of dollars of debt” from the said $378,400 East Orange mortgage, student loan and credit card debt. He listed $27 savings among his assets.
A three-judge state appellate court meanwhile ordered Edwards, on June 19, 2018, to pay the city back $268,750. The figure was the salary Edwards drew while he was “Deputy Business Administrator” – a job title that is not in the city’s code book organizational table.
Mayor Warren had first named Edwards as his Business Administrator July 1, 2012. When the City Council vetoed Edwards, the mayor redesignated him as Deputy Administrator, and pay him BA wages, Oct. 3.
When a State Superior Court-Newark judge nixed the title-salary hybrid in 2014, Warren recast Edwards as his chief of staff. Edwards left City Hall as Chief of Staff, under court order, Dec. 31, 2015.
