BY WALTER ELLIOTT
NEWARK – The chief executive officer of a construction company and his foreperson are facing federal charges since Oct. 3 for allegedly defrauding the City of Newark $10.2 million for its part in the 2019-21 Lead Service Line Replacement Program.
U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger announced that Thursday here that Michael P. Sawyer, 57, of Burlington, and Latronia “Tee” Sanders, 55, of Roselle were respectively arrested and charged on a count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. They each face a potential 20-year maximum sentence in a federal prison plus between $250,000 and twice the gross loss suffered by the victims should they either plead or are found guilty and are sentenced by a U.S. Magistrate Judge.
Sawyer and Sanders, as officers of JAS Group Enterprises, Inc., are accused of failing to replace lead water service lines between Newark water department mains and customer water lines with copper lines as per their contract with the city. They had taken pictures of copper lines put in place at other sites and passed them off as their own replaced lines to the city.
The Princeton-company bills itself on its website as a contractor and subcontractor in the Newark LSLRP. It said that it had served “on different phases of the project to replace over 5,000 service lines in Newark.”
JAS received a $10.2 million emergency services subcontract from the city as its part of the $170 million LSLRP. $120 million thereof came from Essex County Improvement Authority bonds, which city taxpayers are paying back to the ECIA 2019-49.
“As our complaint alleges, Sawyer and Sanders worked for the company hired by the city to replace lead pipes but, instead, intentionally left lead pipes in the ground,” said Sellinger. “By causing misleading photographs and verification documents to be submitted, Sawyer and Sanders concealed that they intentionally didn’t replace the lead pipes and defrauded Newark by collecting payment for work they didn’t properly perform. Today, we begin the process of holding them accountable.”
JAS was one of several companies Newark awarded emergency no-bid contracts to replace 23,190 lead lines found in the city and in parts of Belleville and Hillside served by Newark Water Department infrastructure.
The emergency was called after periodic New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection readings found high lead content in 2017-18.
There is no real “safe” amount of lead in water, which is measured in parts per billion in a gallon of water. Lead exposure can lead to brain damage, hampered nervous system development, low birth weight and miscarriage.
How Newark and Essex County handled the lead crisis became a national model of remediation up to now. New Jersey based Newark’s model to start a statewide program in 2022. Both plans include minority and women owned business hiring and training components.
Cong. Frank Pallone (D-New Brunswick) announced Oct. 8 that New Jersey will be getting $44 million in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency funds from a bipartisan federal infrastructure bill that will help replace LSLs by 2034.
It is not clear how the U.S. Justice Department is involved outside of Sawyer and Sanders’ alleged use of telephonic airways and/or landlines to transmit the phony line replacement pictures.
It does appear that JAS became suspect through one or up to three water line audits performed by the DEP since January. What started out as three lines or fittings found with lead content became 12 of 90 sampled in the March 21 audit and 32 of 705 Sept. 6.
Although the locations of the sampled and contaminated lines were not made public, city and state authorities detected a “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” pattern – where JAS did or allegedly did not work.
Federal court filings, however, listed sites along North 11th and 13th streets, Badger Avenue, Bergen Street and Chapman Street – among the 1,500 JAS supposedly replaced – as being partially done or not done at all.
City and federal detectives then interviewed JAS workers and other witnesses – who said that Sanders, when informed of a lead line, told them to leave it be.
Mayor Ras Baraka and Water and Sewer Director Kareem Adeem reiterated what they had said after the Sept. 6 audit report: that the found lead lines and fittings found were replaced in a day or two and that Newark’s water sample reports to the DEP are down to zero PPB per gallon.
“We took blows from residents, other people and the media because people wanted to know information that we just couldn’t give them because there was an investigation happening: said Baraka Oct. 3. “All we did was put our head down and try to change what we saw every time we found lead.”
The FBI-Newark Office is continuing the investigation.
