TOWN WATCH
ORANGE – A city man accused of carrying out a local mail fraud plot last year will return to a Newark federal court April 25 for sentencing since his Dec. 14 guilty plea submission.
Amin C. Jones, 29, had pleaded guilty before US Magistrate Judge Susan D. Wigerton that Wednesday to a count each of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and bribery. He faces a maximum $1 million fine and 30 years’ federal imprisonment on the conspiracy charge and up to $250,000 and 15 years on the bribery charge.
Jones and at least one other individual are accused of approaching three USPS letter carriers in East Orange and Newark with around $5,000 each to turn over their routes’ arrow keys in June and July 2021. He and a second person then used those keys to access mailboxes in those cities.
The keys made it easier for Jones and at least one other person to take checks and bank cards from the mail January-July 2021. They used the stolen items and related information to steal money from others’ bank accounts.
The scheme ended when Jones tried to bribe a fourth letter carrier – who happened to be an undercover USPS postal inspector – that July.
It is not known as of press time whether Jones accomplice or accomplices are in custody or at large. It is also unknown what sort of disciplinary measures were meted out to the three letter carriers.
Neither US Attorney Phillip R. Sellinger nor his New Jersey District-Newark officers have disclosed their status.
NEWARK – “Local Talk” has learned that Ronald “Cowboy” Wright has ridden west into the sunset for the last time on Sept. 27.
Wright was a longtime horseback riding instructor. His main day job was to teach members of the Newark Police Division Mounted Patrol Unit to properly ride their horses. Wright, who was known to ride his horse on city streets, liked to pass on his love of horsing to children.
Wright had wanted to train youth in production and marketing of his Cowboy’s Ranch House Cookies in the 2010s. He was a frequent Municipal Council public speaker, looking for help in locating factory space. 444 Central Ave – a former Firestone tire dealership now Laundry Fresh Laundromat – was eyed 2014-16.
According to his several Facebook pages, Wright had studied in East Orange’s Clifford J. Scott High School 1953-56 before settling in Newark. He was a horse handler at the Meadowlands “Big M: Racetrack in 1976-77.
Wright, who drove a Chevrolet minivan when his horse was not available, is survived by three sons, four daughters, 14 grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, three brothers and two sisters. A son and two brothers had predeceased him.
A funeral service here at Good Neighbor Baptist Church was held Oct. 14, followed by cremation at Hillside’s Evergreen Cemetery.
IRVINGTON – Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office and Watchung Borough detectives brought a township man from his North Ward residence here to their county jail in Somerville as a residential burglary suspect Dec. 7.
Watchung police officers told SCPO detectives that they were called to a Johnston Drive residence at 1:26 a.m. that Tuesday. The resident said that someone had forced entry to the house and a safe – and removed items from the latter – sometime overnight Dec. 5-6.
The out-of-town law enforcers arrived at Randolph C. McCleod’s Lenox Avenue address here later that Tuesday with search warrants. They said that they found items “from the residential burglary” in McLeod’s place and car.
Neither Somerset County Prosecutor John P. McDonald nor Watchung Police Chief Andrew Hart, in their Dec. 16 joint release, have said how McCleod was otherwise linked to the burglary.
McCleod, 42, is being held on second-degree handgun possession without a permit, third-degree burglary and theft and disorderly person charges of possessing burglary tools and criminal mischief.
McDonald and Hart said that the investigation is continuing.
EAST ORANGE – The city and county had paid last respects to native son and public servant Arthur L. Wright here at the Faith Temple Baptist Church Dec. 21.
Wright, 78, who was most recently the Essex County Deputy Clerk and an East Orange School District Board of Education member and its board president, died here at his Woodland Avenue home Dec. 6.
The former Essex County Freeholder was also a longtime industrial arts public high school teacher here in East Orange and in Somerset County’s Franklin Township. He founded CHELMS – a neighborhood organization of mostly African American families on six city streets.
Wright, who was born the 11th of 14 children here Sept. 16, 1944, was a lifelong East Orangite. The student of public schools here, in Newark and Caldwell served the US Army in France as a Military Policeman. He used his GI Bill to attain a B.A. in Industrial Arts from now-Montclair State University.
The VFW Post No. 7923 member, while in EOSD employment, was Co-Advisor of the annual Historic Black College and University Bus Tour and advisor of the Student Gospel Choir and Junior Kiwanis Club.
Then-First Ward Councilman Stephen S. Thomas introduced Wright to politics and governmental service.
Wife La Verne Wright, daughter Lisa, sisters Delores Frazier, Barbara Smith and Muriel Hargrove and brothers Marvin and Charles Wright are among his wide range of survivors and mourners.
WEST ORANGE – Township Council members, with a notable exception, voted to have Fairview Insurance Agency Associates search for the best health benefits for municipal employees here Nov. 22.
Councilman Rev. Bill Rutherford was the sole dissenter that Tuesday night, expressing no confidence in the Verona-based firm.
“I think they meddle in local elections in an improper or distasteful fashion,” said Rutherford without elaboration, “so I can’t support anything from them.”
The nearest incident to what the councilman was talking about can be found in Jersey City in 2012-13. Fairview director Ryan Graham was accused of telling then-Jersey City Board of Education Member Stirling Waterman in an email to “to vote the contract down” the proposed hiring of a rival firm GC Murray, of Princeton, at their board meeting.
The JCBOE, in 2012, awarded Fairview an insurance contract. Fairview spokesman Tim White said that Graham’s message to Waxman was “advice.” Graham was a top fundraiser to City Councilman Steve Fulop’s successful mayoral campaign. Fairview, in a 2016 Federal Election Commission filing had donated $10,000 towards Fulop’s prospective gubernatorial campaign.
West Orange Township Attorney/Business Administrator John Grodd reminded the council that they had hired Fairview earlier in 2022 to make similar rate searches for other departments.
Fairview founder John F.X. Graham was an NJBIZ 2021 Icon Award recipient.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Parental efforts to get the South Orange-Maplewood School District to restore courtesy busing took a new turn when several public speakers asked the district to conduct a “Hazardous Routes Analysis” at the Board of Education’s Dec. 15 meeting.
Several public speakers from South Orange said during that Thursday night meeting that their children have been walking to their schools since the start of the 2022-23 school year. Some of those routes, they pointed out, had been designated as hazardous in a previous SOMSD study.
The two-town district had filed a 2021 Audit of Hazardous Routes to the New Jersey Department of Education. The current Board of Education, citing time and financial constraints, had eliminated courtesy busing from its 2022-23 school budget.
Outgoing Board President Thair Joshua had promised that he and his colleagues would consider restoring courtesy busing later this school year. Board Attorney Frances Febres added that Thursday that the matter “is before a (BOE) committee’ but, “due to all the litigation, we can’t talk about that right now.”
Febres was referring to a recent Administrative Law Judge ruling in Newark. That judge found in favor of a suing SOMSD parent in that the district was not following its own transportation policy.
Public school districts may run buses for students who reside between a mile and two miles of their assigned schools. NJDOE requires the said districts to run buses for students who live beyond a two-mile radius of their schools.
BLOOMFIELD – The owner of the former Friendly’s restaurant here at 1243 Broad St. has been mulling its next move since the Bloomfield Planning Board had turned down its proposal to replace it with a Wendy’s/Taco Bell Dec. 6.
The board, after three marathon public hearings in as many months, kicked out Finomus Bloomfield RE Holdings LLC’s site plan application at 11:30 p.m. that Wednesday.
Township planners expressed safety and aesthetic concerns for rejecting Finomus’ application. The proposed 29 parking spaces in front of and behind the combined restaurant, they reasoned, may not be enough to handle peak customer demand. The front lot parking, furthermore, is not in keeping with on-site parking of neighboring establishments.
Although the “No Left Turn” from the lot to southbound Broad Street was held over from the 1971-2021 Friendly’s era, the applicant had testified that they may need the services of a traffic officer at peak hours.
Some board members and public speakers were concerned that parking for food pickup service was a workaround of the property’s “No Drive Through Service” ban. The building was set too far back for the comfort of adjacent homeowners.
Finomus is not barred from restarting the process with a revised application.
MONTCLAIR – Township administrators and staff have until Jan. 13 to provide a state grand jury the personnel files of all seven Township Council members, including those of the Mayor.
Those files, to be delivered in a sealed box, are to include any and all timesheets and timecards, paychecks and pay stubs, attendance records and duty rosters and any documents related to council members’ salaries, bonuses and/or incentive awards going back into 2011.
Acting New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin’s office had issued a subpoena for the above material that was served on the Municipal Building Dec. 8.
It is believed that the material demand and grand jury empanelment has to do with ex-Chief Financial Officer Padmaja Rao’s attempts to bring Township Council records into compliance with a 2010 state law. That law states that employees with a fixed work week of 35 hours are eligible to state benefits.
Rao had filed a harassment and hostile workplace lawsuit against the township and Township Manager Timothy Stafford in October. The ex-CFO stated that she had tried to bring this and several related matters to Stafford, only to have the manager shout at her and being barred from a finance committee meeting.
Rao had asserted that four council members were not entitled to the State Health Benefits Plan. Montclair had switched from a private insurer in 2017.
The Council had put Stafford on administrative leave Oct 25 in the wake of Rao and one other former employee’s lawsuit. The township’s law department had filed a countersuit against Rao, saying that “boorish, unprofessional behavior” are not grounds for a harassment suit.
BELLEVILLE – Township and surrounding police are looking for four men who assaulted a bank ATM user early Dec. 14 and the Mercedes-Benz they were driving.
Responding Belleville police officers met a man by the Valley National Bank ATM at 237 Washington Ave early that Wednesday. He said that he was making a deposit around Midnight when he noticed that a red Mercedes C300 was circling the area.
The victim said that he was about to enter his parked car when the Mercedes “accelerated” and pinned him between the two cars. He then noticed that all four occupants were wearing ski masks. While none said a word or left the C300, “one of them motioned that he had a gun.”
The Mercedes driver eventually reversed to free the victim and began driving south on Washington Avenue. The victim drove behind them until he called the police.
An initial BPD search had failed to find the car or the suspects.
NUTLEY – Fire Chief Henry Meola has gone from his arrest at home here Dec. 16 to his return Dec. 17 – after an overnight stay at the Hudson County Correctional Center and a conditional court release.
Meola, 33, was arrested by North Bergen Police officers, in company with Nutley police and the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office Special Victims Unit, at his home Friday morning. The two year chief was charged at NBPD Municipal Court on third-degree endangering the welfare of a minor and second-degree attempted luring.
Meola was released from the South Kearny jail by State Superior Court Judge Armando Molina on condition that he regularly calls into the judge’s Jersey City bench until his case is adjudicated. Township Attorney Jonathan Bruno, on Dec. 15, said that Meola has been suspended from his volunteer job since Dec. 7.
Meola was in the North Bergen Walmart parking lot, where he had arranged to meet a 14-year-old boy through a cell phone app. The boy was actually a decoy brought along by OLN Nation program producer “Remy,” 33, and one of his associates.
Remy has been producing “To Catch a Predator” like shows on Instagram. He and his two associates’ encounter with Meola was being livestreamed.
Meola brought his three guests into Nutley – but to Petracco’s Restaurant and Deli on Bloomfield Avenue. Eatery owner and Nutley Public Safety Commissioner Alphone Petracco said Meola had call him that he was going there and that he was “in a situation.”
The Meola-Remy party was met there by Bruno and NPD officers. They were tipped off by Instagram livestream viewers. They took Meola in for questioning, starting an investigation that was transferred to ECPO and HCPO. Remu has been cooperating with authorities.
