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 to purchase canisters to collect coins from meters
FEBRUARY 27, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2015, 12:31 AM
BY STEPHANIE ALBERICO
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
The Village Council moved forward on Wednesday with a new parking policy for Cottage Place and a resolution to award a contract to purchase secure canisters for meters.
The council also agreed to begin using Park Mobile, the cell phone application that allows people to use an online account and credit card to pay for parking.
New collection mode
The village will be replacing buckets with enclosed canisters and carts with lock boxes to transport coinage from Ridgewood’s parking meters.
The move comes in response to a theft of approximately $460,000 worth of quarters by former public works employee Thomas Rica, who stole the coins from a locked room in Village Hall. A recent audit released in early February revealed that an additional $377,000 had vanished from the coin room, totaling approximately $850,000.
New collection containers and the corresponding cart system will better secure the coinage that is collected twice a month from village parking meters, said Village Manager Roberta Sonenfeld.
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.
