The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
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Upper Saddle River NJ, from time to time the Ridgewood blog does book reviews and we just finished the “King of Con ” by Thomas Giacomaro and Natasha Stoynoff published in 2018 . We received a copy from the author Tom Giacomaro , the “King of Con: himself through a mutual friend in early February and finally got to reading it this past weekend .
Continue reading The King of Con by Thomas Giacomaro and Natasha Stoynoff
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Twp. of Washington NJ, Carol Higgins Clark, who as a young woman retyped manuscripts by her mother, famed mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark, before going on to become a best-selling suspense novelist herself, died Monday in Los Angeles. She was 66.
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Saddle River NJ, Well, it was twenty years ago today…when a bunch of FBI guys got hit in the head with a million bucks, falling from the New Jersey sky.
Until that moment, April 2002 had been going okay for NJ con master, Thomas Giacomaro, author of the 2018 memoir The King of Con: How a Smooth-Talking Jersey Boy Made and Lost Billions, Baffled the FBI, Eluded the Mob, and Lived to Tell the Crooked Tale.
True, he was doing 18 months for embezzlement at Fort Dix prison, just south of Trenton. But it was easy time in a low-security prison. And he was such a clean, neat inmate…he was a shoo-in to get out by Christmas.
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Saddle River NJ, Childhood memories of spring are usually happy and bright: Icicles dripping, chocolate Easter bunnies, putting your sneakers on after a long, Jersey winter.
For local anti-hero, Thomas Giacomaro, spring reminds him of the day he saw his father almost kill two men.
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Saddle River NJ, Was Will Smith having a mental breakdown when he assaulted Chris Rock at the Oscars on Sunday night? Was he on drugs?
I’ve heard both theories—and more. But Denzel Washington has the one Smith likes best because it takes the blame off him.
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Saddle River NJ, in honor of last night’s Academy Awards—and actor Will Smith’s unhinged outburst—local bad-boy-turned good, Thomas Giacomaro, tells us his nickname was once “the Italian Hannibal Lecter.”
The Anthony Hopkins drama, The Silence of the Lambs, swept the Oscars exactly 30 years ago winning five main categories—Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.
A decade later, Giacomaro—who penned his 2018 memoir The King of Con: How a Smooth-Talking Jersey Boy Made and Lost Billions, Baffled the FBI, Eluded the Mob, and Lived to Tell the Crooked Tale, earned the moniker—in prison.
Continue reading AND THE OSCAR FOR BEST PSYCHO PERFORMANCE GOES TO…
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Saddle River NJ, If you try to Google-map it, the house is shrouded in shrubbery and leafy Northern Red Oak.
But it’s still there, the 8,000 square-foot mansion on Fox Hedge Road in Saddle River, NJ—a potential upcoming shooting location this fall for the upcoming docuseries, The King of Con, and former home of local legend, Thomas Giacomaro.
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Saddle River NJ, Last week’s episode of The Walking Dead had pizza purists yelling molto bene when the show delivered a reprimand to ignorant Pizza Hut eaters: Never, ever, put pineapple on a pizza.
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Saddle River NJ, The colorful bloom of spring always reminds New Jersey businessman Thomas Giacomaro of his first enchanted meeting with celebrated mystery novelist, Mary Higgins Clark.
Continue reading MARY HIGGINS CLARK: “HE’LL MAKE ME RICH AND FAMOUS!”
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Ridgewood NJ, Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie had scolding words last Sunday for his one-time ally and friend, Donald Trump.
“He actually told the truth by accident,” Christie said on ABC’s This Week, “he wanted the election to be overturned.”
Christie’s no stranger to liars and conmen. He came face to face with the best almost 20 years ago.
Continue reading CHRIS CHRISTIE AND HIS EXTRAORDINARY CON MEN
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Clifton NJ, the 88-year-old dilapidated Route 3 Bridge will finally be renovated to the tune of $143 million, the Department of Transportation announced last week.
Construction begins in two years…forty years after one of our local celebrities, Thomas “The King of Con” Giacomaro, busted up the guardrails during a mysterious, high-speed chase that made the newspapers.
The businessman tells the tale in his memoir, The King of Con, which is in pre-production for a docuseries to be filmed in North Jersey this year.
Casting for the new King of Con docuseries is underway and filming will begin this summer, so North New Jerseyites will be seeing those fold-up director chairs and movie lights soon.
For all you wanna-be actors, filmmakers need locals to be on camera “to give an authentic NJ ambience,” says one KOC producer, “and fill the diners, streets, and stores with real-life faces of the residents who live here.”
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Trenton NJ, in an effort to further incentivize movie, television and other digital media projects to come to New Jersey, a bill sponsored by Assembly Democrats Gordon Johnson, William Spearman and Raj Mukherji would expand the state’s film and digital media content production tax credit program. The legislation passed the full Assembly and Senate on Monday, by a vote of 65-12-0 and 31-2, respectively.
‘Tis the season to be immortalized!
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Saddle River NJ, One of our own North Jersey personalities, The King of Con’s Thomas Giacomaro—who grew up in Paterson before living a life of Koi ponds and Bentleys in Saddle River—
was once the inspiration for a Christmas character created by “Queen of Suspense” novelist, Mary Higgins Clark—also a Saddle River/Spring Lake resident until her death last year.
It was Christmas eve 2004 (Higgins’ birthday) when Giacomaro, who bilked Clark for millions after she invested in one of his companies, read Mary’s description of him in her holiday offering, The Christmas Thief.
In a case of art imitating life, Higgins’ lead character, Packy Noonan, was “a world-class scam artist whose offense had been to cheat trusting investors out of nearly $100 million in the seemingly legitimate company he had founded… Fifty years old, narrow-faced, with a hawk-like nose, close-set eyes, thinning brown hair, and a smile that inspired trust.”
Yup. That’s him all right. “The guy even looks like me,” says Giacomaro today, still a NJ local but now reformed and living life on the straight and narrow.
Mary was a tad more lenient on her fictionalized scam artist than a judge was with Giacomaro, who was sentenced to four months more prison time than her lead character:
Continue reading NOVELIST MARY HIGGINS CLARK WROTE NJ “KING OF CON” A FOREVER X-MAS PRESENT
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Newark NJ, the FBI confirmed Friday it searched a former landfill site under the Pulaski Skyway late last month, though a spokesperson for the Detroit field office, which has been leading the decades-long investigation into the disappearance of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, said she couldn’t speak further because the affidavit is sealed.
