October 18,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, According to Activist Bill Brennan , when $860,000 in parking meter change was stolen from the Village of Ridgewood no one expected that Thomas Rica’s confession would allow him to pay back a mere $250,000 and avoid spending any time in jail whatsoever….When Brennan wrote this in August of 2015, Rica has paid back less than $100,000 of the $860,000 that went missing and he will never serve a day in jail for his crime.
Readers find it hard to believe Ridgewood meter thief acted alone and went unnoticed for so long
https://theridgewoodblog.net/readers-find-it-hard-to-believe-meter-thief-acted-alone-and-went-unnoticed-for-so-long/
10 Year Old Ryan Leo Kamm asks ,How did coin thief get away?
https://theridgewoodblog.net/10-year-old-ryan-leo-kamm-asks-how-did-coin-thief-get-away/
He was politically connected. Most people that steal this amount of money do prison time, but not in Ridgewood.
A court trial would have revealed the lack of any defined security processes associated with the collection and storage of cash parking utility revenues. He skated because Village officials wanted to avoid public embarrassment/ridicule.
He had to have had help…..my guess is he had 3 or 4 accomplices.
There’s something rotten here…someone is trying to hide the piss poor security processes that were in place for the meter revenues.
This story continues to fascinate me. I was planning to go to a VC meeting to ask how much has been recouped. It is a physical impossibility for one person to steal that many quarters in 2 yrs. He would have had to steal at least 6500 quarters EVERYDAY that he worked!! No wonder he had so much vacation time left over! Each day he took off he was losing $1600.
Because this was municipal money that was stolen, is there a place where the public can read the judge’s ruling and see the accounting of what he has paid back?
Yep, it would have been physically demanding to steal that many quarters unnoticed. Every day the guy would have had to sneak out a heavy satchel full of metal without getting caught. More likely, a half dozen or so people were taking it by the handful for petty cash over the course of a few years. These people were connected enough to arrange for Rica to plead out for a cupcake sentence. Someone must have been connected to the BD Prosecutor. If Rica did pay back $100k, an audit of where he got that money would lead back to anyone else who was stealing too.
A trial would have revealed that other senior Village officials were dipping into it for office incidentals like drinks, meals, birthdays, etc. Coin boy simply ripped the crap out of it. The deal was all about avoiding the political fallout from the truth being exposed.
“I can’t shake the feeling that all these conspiracy theorists are in on it.”
Same situation with the “illegal” dumping at Lakeview. We all know who did it, but Village officials don’t want to say for fear of embarrassment/ridicule.
Just to put it in perspective, a $10 roll of quarters weighs 1/2 a pound.
$860k = 430,000 lbs
A $500 box of quarter is 1/2 a cubic foot $860,000 is 1720 Cubic feet or 21’wide x 21 feet long x 4 feet high….
Who says he stole 860 thousand I heard 400 thousand at the most
All under the watchful eye of deputy Ruitisauser if he had spent more time watching employees under his direct charge instead of driving around busting people’s balls over signs on residents lawns or leaves in the street on the wrong day maybe this wouldn’t have taken place.
no fuckin way 460, over a mill. wake up.
his boss mr ruitisauser knows more. come on.
to 8.25, the top know who did the dumping, yeah one of them , aka manager of hummmmm,
Read the news reports from that time $860 K was the number.