Ridgewood NJ, Long time resident suggests what the Ridgewood blog suggested some years ago and was barraged by disparaging comments from friends of Tommy Rica .
“I care very much about this village and I never felt we needed this parking garage. I own properties in the the downtown and I do not feel burdened by a lack of parking or the need for much more parking.
Furthermore I hardly ever feel I can’t quickly and cheaply (compared to NYC) find a parking spot on the block I’m going to, and I’m in town every day.
My suggestion though to the village fathers would be to go to a Muni Meter system as we use in NYC. The cost savings would be tremendous… Less maintenance and I think most people pay with a credit card… So needless to say we wouldn’t need to worry about a half million $$$ in quarters disappearing!”
Obviously if you have been downtown lately, you must have noticed the little green stickers affixed to our existing meter-heads. That is because now, you can park anywhere in the central business district, using credit cards, phones, coins, or the incredible app.to park! And, you don’t have to walk to another location to get a piece of paper to leave on your windshield…
While park mobile has its pros and cons , its a shame that we had a simple solution so many years ago and it was ignored ! The Village even went out of its way to install quarter meters at great inconvenience to commuters at the Ridgewood train station.
NOVEMBER 2, 2015, 2:11 PM LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2015, 10:32 PM
BY DUSTIN RACIOPPI
STATE HOUSE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
After a full week of not talking about the decision to end the 14-year tenure for Bergen County’s top law enforcement official, Governor Christie said Monday that the move was “long overdue.”
But Christie’s brief comments did little to answer questions about why Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli was told to leave, and why that move came amid mounting questions about the prosecutor’s decision-making and motivations in recent cases.
And also still unclear is who will replace Molinelli and when, a process that could take months unless Bergen County’s delegation of five state senators reaches an agreement with Christie.
Christie made his first comments on the matter Monday, one week after Molinelli was notified that he wouldn’t be renominated for a third term.
“The fact is that it’s time for a change in Bergen County. It’s long overdue,” Christie said after a meeting in Camden where he was highlighting police reform. “When that change is officially made, I’ll give you all the reasons why.”
Christie also said he wasn’t influenced by a letter sent by the Bergen County freeholder chairwoman referring complaints made against Molinelli at recent public meetings.
Candidate for Bergen County Freeholder, Peter Rohrman released the following statement in response to recent a call to the Board of Chosen Freeholders to execute its authority under New Jersey law (NJSA 52:17B-106) to have the state’s Attorney General supersede Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli.
BERGEN COUNTY, NJ – Oct 6, 2015: In recent years, there have been numerous allegations reported by several news agencies that have cast a dark shadow over the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office. The list of allegations include bribery, illegal wiretapping, judicial intimidation, abuse of office, destruction of evidence, fraud, waste, no bid contract, and MURDER!
Beyond those allegations, our state’s Appellate Division and Supreme Court have repeatedly admonished the Bergen County Prosecutor’s behavior and actions.
I have previously raised these concerns in a recent interview with Alyana Alfaro of PolitickerNJ.com in an Aug 31 published interview. This issue needs to be at the forefront of this November’s election.
Bookkeeper from Dumont draws nine-year sentence for embezzling $500K from Ramsey company
OCTOBER 2, 2015, 5:56 PM LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2015, 5:58 PM
BY PETER J. SAMPSON
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
A bookkeeper who authorities said embezzled more than $500,000 from a Ramsey flooring company and lost most of it gambling at casinos was sentenced Friday to nine years in state prison.
Monica P. Arencibia, 51, of Dumont told state Superior Court Judge Margaret M. Foti that she has been living “under the control of a dark secret” — a gambling addiction — and that she wished she could “undo” the harm she had caused.
She acknowledged that she had “violated the trust” of her employer, Gary Perazzo, the owner of Modern Floor Co., Inc., and said she had wanted to tell him what she was doing, but felt “too ashamed.”
Ex-Ridgewood inspector apologizes for stealing nearly half a million dollars in quarters
JULY 9, 2014, 2:39 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, JULY 9, 2014, 2:57 PM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD
HACKENSACK — Ridgewood’s former public works inspector repeatedly apologized on Wednesday for stealing nearly half a million dollars in loose parking meter quarters from the village.
“I am sorry for what I have done,” Thomas Rica told Judge Patrick Roma moments before being sentenced to five years’ probation. “I am very sorry. I’m…I’m just sorry.”
Rica, who lives in Hawthorne, was employed by the village for 10 years before his arrest early last year.
As part of a plea deal accepted by Roma Wednesday, Rica plead to four counts of third-degree theft, and will pay back a little more than half of what he admits he stole from his former employers.
Rica admitted in March to taking the coins over more than two years from a storage room within Village Hall.
OCTOBER 2, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2015, 12:24 AM
BY JEAN RIMBACH AND JOHN C. ENSSLIN
STAFF WRITERS |
THE RECORD
The day after a tumultuous county freeholder meeting attended by critics seeking the ouster of Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli, Freeholder Chairwoman Joan Voss said those concerns should be taken to the state.
“If they have an issue, they should go to the attorney general,” Voss said Thursday, noting the attorney general oversees all county prosecutors.
“The Freeholder Board can’t do anything,” she added. “It’s the prerogative of the attorney general.”
Bill Brennan — a former firefighter who runs a Facebook page critical of Molinelli — and several others attended Wednesday’s meeting to call on the board to pass a resolution requesting the attorney general take over the Prosecutor’s Office due to a crisis in public confidence. Brennan said Thursday that state law would allow it; Voss said she has not had a chance to talk with the board attorney.
“Their stubborn refusal to act is myopic,” said Brennan. “They must know they have this authority and if they didn’t know there’s ample opportunity to investigate it. I want them to act in accordance with the law.”
AUGUST 1, 2015, 11:09 PM LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 2015, 11:23 PM
BY JEAN RIMBACH
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
From a stinging rebuke by the state’s highest court to Friday’s reversal of the official-misconduct conviction of former Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa, it’s been a bad run of late for John Molinelli, Bergen County’s longtime prosecutor.
Although the county’s top law enforcement official has logged plenty of wins in more than a dozen years in the post, his office now finds itself on the losing end of some high-profile cases. On Friday, a state appellate panel tossed out Zisa’s conviction and described the prosecution’s case against him as weak and tainted by prejudicial and improper remarks and evidence.
Only recently the state Supreme Court cited “gross abuse of discretion” in Molinelli’s fight against Carlstadt Mayor William Roseman’s entry into a trial-diversion program known as Pretrial Intervention, or PTI.
Meanwhile, questions about possible political influence in Molinelli’s office emerged this year during the federal trial of former county Democratic Party Chairman Joseph Ferriero, when federal prosecutors referenced a years-old case involving a doctor who was allowed to enter PTI twice and avoid prosecution on allegations that he groped female patients.
NJ Attorney General’s Office rules out probe of stolen meter coins in Ridgewood
MARCH 4, 2015, 11:33 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2015, 11:38 PM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
RIDGEWOOD — The state Attorney General’s Office will not conduct its own investigation into the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars in quarters from a storage room in Village Hall, it was announced Wednesday night.
Instead, Ridgewood’s police department will be looking further into the disappearance of $850,000 in collected parking meter coins on its own, according to Village Manager Roberta Sonenfeld.
Former Ridgewood public works inspector Thomas Rica pleaded guilty last spring to stealing $460,000 of that missing $850,000. Rica had been arrested for stealing collected parking meter quarters over a three-year period.
Sonenfeld said village officials met this week with representatives from the Attorney General’s office. Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli also was present at the meeting, she said.
Ridgewood mayor to lobby Attorney General’s staff for new probe into parking meter cash
FEBRUARY 25, 2015, 10:20 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2015, 10:31 PM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
RIDGEWOOD — Village officials plan to meet next week with representatives from the Attorney General’s Office to discuss a possible investigation into an additional $377,000 in stolen parking meter coins, the mayor said.
Mayor Paul Aronsohn announced Wednesday night that he would go to Trenton for a meeting Tuesday on the findings of a forensic audit. Other village employees will join the session via telephone.
The audit was initiated soon after former Ridgewood employee Thomas Rica pleaded guilty to four counts of third-degree theft after confessing to pocketing $460,000 in coins from Village Hall’s coin room over three years.
The findings, released earlier this month, indicated that Rica’s thieving began earlier than he admitted, and that an additional $377,526 in parking meter revenue was unaccounted for.
Re: “1.5 million more quarters are missing,” The Ridgewood News, Feb. 13, A1:
Thomas Rica was arrested over two years ago for stealing several hundred thousand dollars worth of unsecured quarters from a storage room at Village Hall.
However, I was shocked to learn that village officials still routinely store thousands of dollars worth of quarters in the same storage room for two-week intervals. This despite the massive theft, and their full awareness of a NJ State law requiring municipalities to deposit all cash within 48 hours of receipt.
Furthermore, although it was apparent to village officials from the onset that Mr. Rica’s crime was facilitated by lax coin collection, handling, and storage procedures, a secure coin collection and handling system has not yet been implemented.
Current village officials seem very eager to quickly cast blame for the “coin caper” on those who preceded them. Ridgewood’s taxpayers would be better served if these same officials would dispense with efforts to preserve their respective public images, and instead focus on taking whatever steps are required to ensure that every last cent of cash collected by village employees is safely secured and accounted for.
It’s been over two years since the fox sneaked into the hen house and the hen house still hasn’t been completely secured. Time’s a-wasting.
Reader says Ridgewood is actually the perfect place to screw the taxpayers. Why? Because Ridgewood types are completely oblivious to matters of local government
The impression I get out of all of this, is that Rica was the only person who was flat-out stealing in the pure sense of the word. Although still stealing by definition, the other shrinkage was probably all down to a sense of entitlement by certain other employees who felt it was perfectly acceptable for the Village to pay for their coffees, lunches, etc. I believe that this was an ingrained practice, going back years, probably unofficially sanctioned by certain senior officials. I believe it was this aspect that made the prosecution of Rica very tricky.
You know, I came to Ridgewood almost 20 years ago, and I naively thought that it was probably above all this kind of crap that so often affects municipalities of a lower class standing. I admit that this was naive. I thought the Village was somehow a reflection of the general high levels of sophistication of its residents. Please stop laughing. I really did. Coin Boy and its wider story is just the latest chapter in my utter disgust at municipal government. Who remembers the on-duty cop who was busted for having sex with an under-age girl at the back of Starbucks? Not only did he not go to jail, but he kept his job! That was real am-I-living-in-an-alternate-universe result.
The more I study New Jersey’s enormous history of municipal government issues of corruption, nepotism, laziness, cronyism, etc., it makes for extremely depressing reading. I now think that I had Ridgewood completely the wrong way around, and that it’s actually the perfect place to screw the taxpayers. Why? Because Ridgewood types are completely oblivious to matters of local government, being caught up in their stressful Wall St jobs, their busy social lives, and best of all, the transient nature in which they live here just for the school years.
For those who don’t easily sport sarcasm, the last bit is just that.
You know folks, let’s just laugh it off at our next cocktail party. Just one bad apple, right? This is a great town. You know, they actually come round the back and pick up my garbage. What a town!
Reader says the punishment was ineffectual because had it gone to trial, the whole coin room issue and a lot of employees and management would have been exposed
Perhaps “accomplices” is too narrow a description. If I could re-write this piece, I would not use “accomplices”, but rather other employees, whose actions ranged from not doing their job, to outright stealing (albeit on a much lesser scale). I have no doubt that this coin room was viewed as a place of petty cash, where little to no accounting was effectively maintained. It was a place where handfuls of the stuff could be used for all kinds of incidental expenses, such as coffees and meals. The whole process of old-style coin meters that didn’t record how much they took in made this possible. Basically, the amount of money that was “supposed” to be in the coin room was whatever was either in there, or you wanted it to be. The meters didn’t leave an audit trail whereby they collectively would record the amount that should be in the coin room. The only reason Rica was busted is because he absolutely went completely overboard with his stealing. The reason why the punishment was so ineffectual was because had it gone to trial, his lawyer would bring up the whole coin room issue and a whole lot of employees would be exposed, and management would have been shown to be thoroughly incompetent in their oversight. What couldn’t be allowed to come out was the whole abuse of the coin room, which no matter how you try to rationalize it, is nothing less than Village officials stealing public money.
What about some of his ( worker ) friends had to know some thing, or see some thing . he had bank papers next to the lamp, and coins all around. what about all the things he just bought and did, you would think how can he pay for all this on 85 grand. I say bull , others new and just said zip . well his big head got him caught . and for top managers should be fired. other workers told up top watch out for this guy but they looked the other way, why I don’t know . you think about it. tom must of had real dirt on people, what else would it be. the problem we have is we have lap dogs in this town. and the upper managers like that and take care of those who suck up to them. but the rest of the workers know just who they are, and they will get it in the end. what comes around goes around. so wake up brown nose. yeah you.
Reader says Had this been a case of an employee stealing a similar amount from a bank, or some other private concern, you can rest assured that there would have been a far more vigorous investigation and prosecution, not to mention a sentence of prison time.
Having an understanding about how such things work, I doubt that the police/prosecutor obtained much from him about how much he actually stole, and what he did with it. This would include how he converted literally mountains of quarters into spendable cash. Try buying a jet-ski with bags of quarters! Whenever a plea deal is negotiated, the key word is negotiated. If the guy and his lawyer agreed to plead guilty, then you can be absolutely certain that they will agree to a monetary amount that was significantly less than that which was actually stolen. Any details about how the scheme was perpetrated are simply not delved into, as the plea of guilt deal kind of sets the agenda and shuts everything else down. Cops and prosecutors always aim for the guilty plea deal as it avoids the costs and unpredictability of a trial. Of course, the prosecutor is going to dispute this latest finding as it tends to make him look foolish. Bottom line, folks, this is a case of public money being stolen. Had this been a case of an employee stealing a similar amount from a bank, or some other private concern, then you can rest assured that there would have been a far more vigorous investigation and prosecution, not to mention a sentence of prison time. I agree with others in that I suspect a whole lot of politics also went into this prosecution to avoid exposing a some much lesser accomplices and quite obviously, some terrible internal security and accounting controls.
FEBRUARY 12, 2015, 8:21 PM LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2015, 10:48 PM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
RIDGEWOOD — Some seven months after he admitted stealing $460,000 in parking meter quarters from a storage room in Village Hall, Thomas Rica’s thievery still has residents confused, shocked and disappointed.
Villagers wonder how Rica — a former Ridgewood public works inspector — stole more than a million quarters without help from an accomplice. Other residents are stunned that his crime wave went undetected for so long.
Others remain in utter disbelief over his punishment, which veteran prosecutors have characterized as a “sweetheart deal.”
“I am insane over all of it,” Kay Griffith said Thursday as she left lunch at Raymond’s eatery with a friend. “I’m really very upset.”
Last summer, Rica admitted in court that he took $460,000 in loose quarters from Ridgewood’s coin room.
Rica, who lives in Hawthorne, accepted a plea offer in July that spared him prison time. His sentence is five years’ probation in the deal, brokered by the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office.
Rica must also pay back about half the money over the course of his probation, the deal mandates.
Bergen County prosecutor disputes audit of Ridgewood coin theft case
FEBRUARY 11, 2015, 6:43 PM LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2015, 6:32 AM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
RIDGEWOOD — The Bergen County prosecutor disputed on Wednesday the findings of a forensic audit that determined the theft from Ridgewood’s coin room was even greater than originally thought — $377,526 more than suspected.
Meanwhile, a state legislator is calling for the Attorney General’s Office to help the village find out how the additional money was stolen in a years-long heist of parking meter quarters.
Still, village officials remain intent on unraveling the truth behind the missing money — an unfathomable 3.4 million quarters from 2010 to 2013
Thomas Rica, a former public works inspector for the village, used a master key to access the coin room, where collected meter quarters are sorted and stored. Rica, a Hawthorne resident, admitted stealing $460,000 in coins under a plea deal reached with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office. In return, he received no jail time, five years’ probation and must pay back at least half the money.
Auditors Report on Ridgewood Parking Utility raises serious questions as to whether other people also participated in this theft against the Village
Ridgewood NJ, In a statement released by the Mayor ,Council and Village Manager :
On March 19, 2014, following an investigation by the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, former Ridgewood employee Thomas Rica admitted in Bergen County Superior Court to stealing $460,000 from the municipality’s parking utility over about a 3-year period – from 2010 to January 2013. At that hearing, Mr. Rica entered into a plea agreement in which, among other things, he was required to repay the amount of $460,000.
Following that hearing and a subsequent July 10, 2014 sentencing hearing, the Village of Ridgewood’s insurance carrier, the Municipal Excess Liability Fund, hired a forensic accounting firm, Nisivoccia LLP, to undertake a comprehensive audit of the loss incurred by the Village’s parking utility. That audit is now complete.
Yesterday, we received Nisivoccia’s final report, which concludes that over a similar period of time, approximately $850,000 was stolen from the Village. The auditor’s conclusion is very disturbing and raises serious questions concerning the scope and method of the crime or crimes that have been committed against the Village. Most notably, it raises the question as to whether other people also participated in this theft against the Village, acting independently or in cooperation with Mr. Rica.
Although we have taken and continue to take several concrete steps to strengthen controls on parking utility revenues, we believe that it is absolutely necessary to try to determine the full extent of the theft[s] committed during the 2010 to January 2013 period.
We are therefore exploring all of our legal options, including possibly starting a Ridgewood Police investigation into this matter. We will make a determination as to next legal steps within weeks.
We are continuing to work with Nisivoccia LLP to review our processes and controls – past and present – to determine if negligence and/or procedural violations contributed to the theft[s} and what steps, if any, still need to be taken to prevent theft going forward.
We are continuing to work with the Municipal Excess Liability Fund to recoup all of the monies stolen from the Village. This is a top priority.
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