By Walter Elliott
ORANGE – “How” corrupt is Orange may lie in its sociology as much as in investigators and a grand jury’s findings the past decade.
“Local Talk” remembers a sociology textbook from the late 1970s where the U.S. Navy commissions a new battleship into service. The Navy draws up an organizational chart and personnel from its in-service fleet to populate and operate the new ship.
The new ship’s crew, said the textbook, begins to develop the official and unofficial culture even before starting their shakedown cruise.
They, on one hand, learn who are proficient or well-suited to their job titles. They also learn who are not-so-well suited and how to work around or bypass them despite the organizational chart.
This developmental association process – particularly in appointments, hiring and promotion – spawned the 105-year-old expression, “It’s not what you know but who you know.”
The developing culture develops a parallel with how strictly the crew goes by the governing rules. Which rules are “strictly by the book,” and which are winked at or bypassed, are learned among crew members.
When then-City Council Legislative Research Officer Dwayne D. Warren was elected to succeed Eldridge Hawkins, Jr. as mayor in 2012, he did not look far among his supporters to find his city business administrator candidate.
Willis Edwards III was more than Warren’s campaign manager. The former one-term State Assemblyman (D-East Orange, 2001-03) and East Orange Housing Authority Commissioner had studied at NJIT and was an adjunct instructor at Essex County College, among other local colleges and universities.
Edwards and Warren were reportedly fraternity brothers at either University of Massachusetts-Amherst or Rutgers School of Law-Newark.
Edwards was Orange’s Business Administrator, “Deputy Administrator” or Mayor’s Chief of Staff from July 1, 2012 until he left under New Jersey Superior Court order Dec. 31, 2015. The order, over the propriety of the deputy BA job title, included Edwards paying back $268,705 in salary.
Edwards, as department head, directed the city’s daily operations and applied city policies to various projects. Those projects included modernizing the Orange Public Library, updating the Freddie Pohill Law and Justice Complex and converting the Orange YWCA into the Orange Recreational, Educational and Cultural Center.
It was during those 41 months, and another six months afterward, that federal attorneys and a grand jury said that Edwards had offered and/or accepted bribes and kickbacks on several city contracts. The graft resulted in the city paying for inflated or non-existing goods and services.
The feds’ accusations, the result of 5.5-years’ search warrants, subpoenas and depositions, have resulted in seven sets of indictments against Edwards and six associates. The former department head, now in Lithonia, Ga., faces 31 counts and, if found guilty and sentenced to the maximum on all, up to 113 years in federal prison.
Four of the other seven – a former OPL director, two contractors and a tax preparer – have pleaded guilty 2019-20. Two of them are serving or have served their prison terms. One, in his testimony, had named Edwards.
A college term paper writer had pleaded not guilty April 16, 2021. An electrical contractor and mortgage broker has not entered a plea since his Feb. 27, 2020 arrest.
Edwards, as of press time, has not entered a plea since a federal grand jury handed down bills of indictment July 9 and Sept. 20, 2020.
None of the indictments so far nor the continuing investigation have included Warren’s handling of Edwards’ job positions nor of Edwards’ salary during part of those 41 months.
Warren, after the City Council denied confirming Edwards as BA, named him Deputy Administrator and paid him BA-level wages. The DA position, however, is not in the city codebook’s table of organization.
The council successfully sued the mayor in N.J. Superior Court-Newark in 2014. The Superior Court Judge ordered Edwards to leave the city government Dec. 31, 2015. A later judge ordered Edwards to pay $268,705 in restitution; Edwards, however, had entered Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
Warren had Edwards finish out his time in City Hall as his chief of staff.
Edwards, earlier in his office, knew Franklyn D. Ore by way of the Orange Board of Education and Warren.
Warren had appointed Ore, now 51, to the board – only to dismiss him when Ore still lived in Jersey City.
Edwards had advanced contractor Ore money so the latter can incorporate Urban Planners. The department head, in 2015, had the city’s contracted planner, The Nishuane Group, of Montclair, hire UP to join in the city’s Central Avenue Redevelopment Area project.
Ore sent phony invoices to Edwards and Nishuane for work that was never done. Nishuane, out of its $15000 contract with the city, cut $33,220 in checks to UP August 2015-February 2016. Edwards then allegedly received kickbacks from Ore/UP.
Edwards, before leaving City Hall, informed Ore that there still was some of the city’s discretionary funds left before Dec. 31, 2015. Ore/UP sent a phony $16,000 invoice for “services” in the city’s YWCA/Orange REC Center study. Some of that $16,000 allegedly went back to Edwards.
Ore, as UP, and Edwards supposedly tapped into a $50,000 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant that was given to OPL via Essex County. HUD and the county awarded the library after the latter had applied for a Saturday Literacy Program.
Edwards, on Ore’s behalf, sent a $36,000 bill to the library. The check the library sent was split between Ore and Edwards.
The Saturday Literacy Program, however, never took place. Essex County got the $50,000 grant back years later.
The HUD grant’s misuse made this a federal case. The U.S. Department of Justice-New Jersey District, the FBI and IRS’s Newark field offices and the HUD Inspector’s General Office have been involved since their serving search warrants on City Hall and/or the library July 22, 2016, Jan. 11, 2017 and Nov. 29, 2018.
Ore had pleaded guilty 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 serving an up to 20-year prison sentence.
Timur Davis, who was twice OPL director, had pleaded guilty to making false statements to HUD Feb. 13, 2020. Davis, who has had professional contact with Edwards 2012-17, faces maximums of a years’ imprisonment and a $100,000 fine.
Davis confessed to falsifying the SLP paperwork and for signing an invoice for a $49,000 HUD grant-funded HVAC chiller that never made it to OPL.
Two federal indictments said that Edwards, Davis and Shenandoah “Shane” Adams had conspired to file false job quotes in two other vendors’ for the OPL chiller replacement contract March 11, 2015. Adams’ VH Electrical and Plumbing LLC, as “lowest responsible bidder,” was awarded the contract.
Adams also sent false progress reports on the chiller’s replacement. Adams, as VH, was paid $40,000 from the HUD Community Development Block Grant.
Adams, a principal of Adams Property Management and Investment Group, and Edwards were also charged with filing a false mortgage modification application April 7, 2014.
Edwards, on the form, said that his City Hall job was his only income source – leaving out his $45,000 salary as an adjunct instructor for “a New Jersey County College.” Adams signed onto the application’s authenticity.
Edwards and Adams entered a Home Affordability Modification Agreement Oct. 8, 2014. This pact led to $95,590 of debt forgiven in July 2015 and the July 2017 removal of Edwards’ Eat Orange property from the foreclosure rolls.
Adams was arrested Feb. 27, 2020 on six counts of wire fraud and two mortgage fraud counts. (The second, separate mortgage count involves qualifying a mortgage for an “Orange Individual No. 1.”) He faces 20 years’ federal imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
Computer service vendor Jeammarie Zahore, 56, of Rahway, and Edwards knew each other via the then-East Orange General Hospital. Edwards EOGH’s external affairs director and Zahore was its information services chief.
Edwards, as “the mayor’s designee,” introduced an emergency noncompetitive contract as a “walk-on” $350,000 resolution before the City Council Sept. 15, 2015. Legislation and appropriations that miss the council agenda’s publication are walk-ons or late-starters. Mayor Warren, who rarely attends the council meetings, tends to have the business administrator as his representative.
The reason why the resolution missed the agenda was that the need did not exist until Sept. 10. Edwards appeared to “the acting police chief and a senior municipal court official” Sept. 14 that their computer system firewalls had not been updated since 2000 and that “JZNettech was selected as the vendor to fix the problem.” Zahore owned JZNettech.
The council, after questioning Edwards, passed the $350,000 emergency resolution, 4-3, and awarded JZNettech. Edwards, on Sept. 18, cut a $115,000 “services” check for the company and Zahore, based on the latter’s Sept. 16 invoice submission. The check was made so that Zahore could purchase materials to start work – something not normally done by the city.
Zahore testified that Edwards told him that October that he had helped him with the contract and that fact should be considered. The JZNettech president handed Edwards two $10,000 envelopes of cash December 2015 and March 2016.
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 up to a 10-year sentence and a $250,000 fine as of March 3, 2021.
Term paper writer Isaac Newton, 53, of Loganville, Ga., was introduced to Edwards by his brother. Brother Newton and Edwards were in the same Seton Hall University doctoral program in 2010. Edwards resumed his SHU doctoral pursuit in late 2015 into 2016.
Edwards asked Isaac Newton to ghostwrite two academic papers which the still- “high Orange official” would pass off to his professors as his own. Edwards paid Newton through the city in December 2015 and June 2016.
Edwards brought a fraudulent graduate studies reimbursement approval letter to “Orange Employee No. 1” in City Hall’s Finance Department on Feb. 10, 2016. He asked that employee to send an email to “Orange Employee No. 2 – a senior official in the Office of the Mayor” and have it approved and backdated to Aug. 17, 2015.
“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’ tuition was reimbursed for $25,142.
Newton had pleaded not guilty to nine counts on conspiracy plus wire and mail fraud counts. He remains free on $100,000 bail while facing up to 20 years’ imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
It is not known whether Maplewood Businesses Services owner Zenobia E. Williams, 52, of Maplewood knew of Edwards beyond tax preparer-client in 2015-16.
Williams had pleaded guilty Dec. 20, 2019 to conspiring to defraud the IRS by filing Edwards’ false 2015 tax return. She allowed Edwards to claim $27,055 in labor expenses for his Natural Care Municipal Cleaning company.
Natural Care, in 2015, had cleaning contracts with a lawyer’s firm, a local board of education – and OPL.
Williams is facing up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
