By Claude Brodesser-Akner | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Everyone knows that in New Jersey, we have the best government that money can buy.

But even after a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision that dramatically raised the bar for proving federal bribery and political corruption, New Jersey public officials still find creative ways to get caught with their hands in the till.

That has prompted the state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal to form a new Office of Public Integrity and Accountability to "root out the corruption and misconduct" on the state level.

Well, good luck with that.

Here's a look at which public servants have been found guilty so far this year of public corruption or misconduct in office.

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Flush with cash, he flushed the cash

Bloomfield councilman Elias Chalet, 56, admitted to second-degree bribery in official or political matters for accepting $15,000 in bribes from a local businessman to ensure the town bought one of the man’s commercial properties.

In July 2018, Chalet was sentenced in Superior Court in Essex County to 5 years in state prison for accepting the cash, some of which he actually tried to flush down a toilet as federal investigators raided his office, according to authorities.

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Opening a nightclub? Do the hustle!

Qaadir Royal, a former employee in the Code Enforcement Office of the City of Newark, pleaded guilty to soliciting and accepting a bribe, taking a $1,000 from a man seeking to operate an after-hours social club in return for falsely altering the man's certificate of occupancy.

Royal was sentenced in Superior Court in Essex County this past September to three years in prison, two of them without parole.

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Photo: NBC 10 Philadelphia

License, registration...phone number?

Eric Richardson was a decorated New Jersey state trooper, honored in 2016 by a national anti-bullying organization.

Last April,he was indicted on six charges including official misconduct, criminal coercion and records tampering for pulling over women and pressuring them to give him their phone numbers.

Richardson ultimately pleaded guilty in Superior Court in Mercer County in June to a single count of illegally using an FBI database to obtain personal information about a motorist for a friend looking to do a background check on an employee.

As part of a plea deal to get probation, he forfeited his position as a state trooper and barred from working for the state.

Richardson is also prohibited from ever having contact with his female victims, and will pay restitution to the them if they require counseling.

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He wouldn't take 'no' for an answer...

Lamont King, 41 of Trenton, pleaded guilty in Superior Court in Mercer County July to a second-degree charge of conspiracy to commit a pattern of official misconduct.

Using his position as a family services worker, he pressured two women he was responsible for supervising in court-ordered child visits into having sex with him, authorities said.

Under his plea deal, King will be barred permanently from public employment in New Jersey.

He is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 16.

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Photo: Reena Rose Sibayan | The Jersey Journal

Never a cop around when you need one?

Former Jersey City chief of police Philip D. Zacche, 61, of Manalapan, had a cushy side job with the Jersey City Housing Authority, providing security at some of their residential sites.

The only problem? Zacche often didn't bother to actually show up, but still billed for some $30,000 in "work," authorities said.

Facing 10 years in prison, he pleaded guilty in federal court to a single count of theft or bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds.

Zacche received two years of probation. Only in New Jersey can a cop guilty of having a no-show job also get to no-show jail.

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It runs in his family...

Billy A. Donnerstag, 49, of Hackettstown, was a fire inspector for Middlesex Borough and other New Jersey municipalities.

He was also the son of convicted murderer Gerald Donnerstag, a mobster who was convicted of executing a Newark man and dumping his body in pond near Scranton in the spring of 1971.

In possibly the most Jersey extortion scam ever, authorities said Donnestag leveraged his father's murder conviction to shake down a real estate developer, admitting to extortion after his victim recorded several threatening conversations of Donnestag boasting of his organized crime ties.



In May, Donnerstag pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit extortion in federal court, which carries up to a 20 year term in federal prison.

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Photo credit: Ed Murray | NJ Advance Media

An officer, but not a gentleman

Former Rockaway Township police officer Wilfredo Guzman, 46, was indicted on two second-degree sexual assault charges for allegedly having sex while on-duty in his patrol car and his police substation with two under-age teen girls, 15 and 16.



He ultimately pleaded guilty in Superior Court Morris County in May to two counts of official misconduct.

Guzman was sentenced to six years in prison, with a minimum of five without parole.

He must also participate in mental health counseling, pay mandatory fines and penalties and is to have no contact with his victims.

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A defense contractor without a defense

Irene Pombo, 68, of Hamburg, and her daughter, Nicole Pier, 38, of Byram Township, kept it in the family.

Mom worked for a defense contractor. Daughter was a civilian employee at Picatinny Arsenal, home to the U.S. Army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center.

For almost a decade, Pombo poured nearly a quarter million dollars worth of bribes and gifts to Arsenal emplyoees, including Pier, in order to obtain and retain contracts, authorities said.

Best of all? You paid for all of it, as the duo write off the cost of the bribes as “materials."

The conspiracy charges to which Pombo and Pier pleaded guilty in federal court in March -- conspiracy to give or accept anything of value in return for favorable assistance with government contracts, and making false claims against the United States -- carries a maximum potential penalty of five years in federal prison.

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Credit: Columbia Pictures

Now where was I again?

Juan Berrios, 41, of Rahway, was a Jersey City police officer who authorities said had an entrepreneurial streak.

Berrios came to the attention of federal authorities s after seeking (and receiving) overtime compensation for appearing in court at the same time that he was also purportedly performing paid off-duty work.

He would finally plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit fraud and accept corrupt payments in federal court. He was sentenced on Oct. 23 to 23 months in prison and three years of probation.

If only he'd seen Michael Keaton's "Multiplicity," he'd have known this wouldn't end well!

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I'm the tax man...yeah

Deon Owensby, 42, of Trenton, really liked being an IRS agent. One of its perks, was the "IRS pocket commission" -- a sort of scary-looking, official federal ID card he thought he could use as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

He was supposed to turn it in to his supervisor when he left his job at the IRS. But instead, he "pocketed" it, claiming it had been stolen but still using it to pretend he was still an IRS agent, as he did when he showed to cops during a traffic violation stop, authorities said.

Owensby pleaded guilty in May in federal court to knowingly possessing an official identification card of a federal agency without authorization.

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Photo credit: Suzy Hazelwood

Utilities commish charged with abuse of power

Erik Lowe, 50, of Paterson, pleaded guilty in federal court in May to one count of conspiring to commit extortion and another count of extortion "under color of official right."

A former commissioner with the now-defunct Paterson Municipal Utilities Authority, Lowe stole almost $300,000 in funds in a kickback scheme with a contractor, authorities said.

Lowe was scheduled to be sentenced in federal court n September, but the proceeding has been delayed until November. He faces a maximum of 20 years in federal prison for each charge.

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Dealing drugs from his cop car...

An officer with the Paterson Police Department, Ruben McAusland pleaded guilty in federal court to selling heroin, cocaine and marijuana on multiple occasions between October 2017 and April 2018.

But the city of Paterson is now also facing a $4 million civil suit over another case.

In June, McAusland admitted to violating the civil rights of a suicidal patient who'd been brought to the emergency room at St. Joseph's Hospital. While awaiting treatment in a wheelchair, the man was beaten by McAusland so badly that he required surgery on one of his eyes.

McAusland was scheduled to be sentenced to federal prison on Oct. 9, but the proceeding was postponed and hasn't been rescheduled. He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a potential maximum of 50.

(Another Paterson police officer, Roger Then, 29 of Paterson, was also indicted participating in the assault on the patient but has pleaded not guilty; his trial is scheduled to start on December 4th.)

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Credit: Customs and Border Protection

A Border Patrol agent charged with assault

Tito Catota, 38, of Lyndhurst, pleaded guilty in federal court in June to two counts of assault against fellow male customs officers on duty at Newark's Liberty International Airport.

In one of the more disturbing cases of a public official going off the rails, Catota admitted that he helped grab two fellow officers, threw them on a piece of furniture dubbed the "rape table" and restrained them while a fellow officer performed simulated sex acts on them as part of a hazing ritual.

Two other Newark-based Customs and Border Patrol agents -- one of them from New Jersey -- are indicted on similar charges are awaiting trial.

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Orange is the new blue

Still another former Jersey City police officer Anthony Iannicco, 49, of Jersey City, pleaded guilty to an information charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit fraud & accept corrupt payments in September.

He was then sentenced in federal court for accepting $55,000 in bribes in exchange for helping employers operate worksites without the required presence of an off-duty cop and for helping a fellow officer get a "no-show" job.

Unlike, his disgraced police chief Zacche, Iannicco will actually have to show up for the 23 months in federal prison.

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Water finds its own level

William "Billi" Ortiz, a former meter reader for the New Brunswick Water Department, and Joseph "Gordo" DeBonis, a former senior account clerk for the New Brunswick Water Department, proved as much by pleading guilty in Superior Court to second-degree official msconduct charges in April.

Their schemes to reduce the water and sewer bills of numerous customers in return for bribes cost the city of New Brunswick half a million dollars.

These two drips are only the latest from water authority: In Dec. 2015, longtime water official Ed O'Rourke pleaded guilty a second-degree charge of corruption of public resources as well as violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act.

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Probation...for stealing $167K?

She was making $106,313 as a JCPD cop when she pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit fraud.

Andrea Fahrenholz, 39, of Clifton, admitted to stealing $167,621 via fraudulent payments while working as a Jersey City police officer from 2014 to 2017,

She was eligible for a federal prison sentence of 18 to 24 months, but thanks to the ex-cop's cooperation with the Feds, she was sentenced in federal court in July to five years of probation and eight months of home confinement.

Fahrenholz is now reportedly working toward earning a certificate to become a medical assistant. so if you get billed $15,000 for a "flu shot co-pay," you might want to call your insurance company.

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Neither snow, nor dark of night... OK, maybe a little snow.

In return for intercepting and personally delivering parcels containing illegal drugs like cocaine and opiates, U.S. Postal Service mail carrier Leonard Gresham, 50, of Rahway, accepted cash bribes of up to $200 per package, authorities said.

He pleaded guilty in federal court in February to one count of accepting bribes, and is now awaiting sentencing, facing a maximum potential penalty of 15 years in federal prison.

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Should felons get pensions?

Public employees in New Jersey must already forfeit their pensions if convicted of money laundering, bribery, perjury, extortion, tampering with public records or official misconduct in the course of performing their duties.

The Assembly this month unanimously passed a bill that would force public workers and elected officials to forfeit their pensions if convicted of sexual misconduct, lewdness or assault.

It bill passed the Assembly 79-0 and now moves to the Senate.

The bill arrived after Joseph Antrilli, a Camden County corrections sergeant, was allowed in August to keep his pension after being indicted in 2017 and convicted of groping a fellow female corrections officer and pleading guilty to harassment in a separate case.

Though Antrilli forfeited his job and was barred from seeking public employment in the state, he was allowed to retire and collect a $43,000 annual pension for the rest of his life.

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Claude Brodesser-Akner may be reached at cbrodesser@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @ClaudeBrodesser. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.

(For those concerned about security, my encrypted email is ClaudeBrodesser@ProtonMail.com and I can also be reached via encrypted instant messaging and voice calling app, Signal.)



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