| TRENTON
– Attorney General Stuart Rabner and
Division of Criminal Justice Director Gregory
A. Paw announced that a former state employee
and two others have been charged with
stealing more than $33,800 from New Jersey’s
unemployment insurance fund. The three state
grand jury indictments resulted from cooperative
investigations by the Department of Labor
and Workforce Development and the Division
of Criminal Justice - Major Financial Crimes
Bureau.
“These
indictments charge the defendants with illegally
collecting thousands of dollars in benefits
to which they were not entitled,”
Attorney General Rabner said. “Our
goal is to identify those who cheat the
system, prosecute them and recover the money
taken from the state treasury.”
“The
Department of Labor and Workforce Development
uses a variety of methods to track those
who would abuse the system and fraudulently
obtain benefits,” said Commissioner
of Labor and Workforce Development David
J. Socolow. “These cases were first
identified by labor department investigators
by cross-matching employer-submitted wage
information against UI benefit payments;
pursuing leads from employer protests of
UI benefit charges; surveying employer payroll
records; and responding to alerts from concerned
citizens.”
An
indictment filed yesterday charged Tequisha
Evans,
(Indictment
108k pdf plug-in)
28,
of Hamilton, with theft by deception and
two counts of unsworn falsification. Evans
filed for unemployment benefits in August
2002, September 2003 and September 2004.
Evans allegedly did data entry at the state
Division of Revenue intermittently while
she was collecting on each of those claims.
It is charged that, by not reporting the
wages to the labor department, Evans illegally
collected more than $6,800 in unemployment
benefits.
An
indictment filed on Nov. 29 alleges that
Kevin Lark,
(Indictment
94k pdf plug-in)
39, of Pennsauken fraudulently received
more than $7,000 in unemployment benefits.
Lark filed for unemployment benefits in
June 2001. It is charged that he began working
at the Atlantic City Convention Center for
Spectacor Management Group in September
2001, but did not report the earnings to
the labor department.
A
second Nov. 29 indictment charged Patrick
W. Persicano,
(Indictment
98k pdf plug-in)
39,
of Bound Brook, with theft by deception
and unsworn falsification for allegedly
stealing more than $11,500 in unemployment
benefits. The indictment alleges that Persicano
failed to notify the labor department that
he was working as a painter for Fromkin
Brothers in Edison at the same time he was
collecting on a February 2003 unemployment
benefits claim. The indictment charges that
during this time period, Persicano also
worked as a painter for Earl Monroe Group
in Kenilworth.
The
crime of third-degree theft by deception
carries a sentence of up to five years in
state prison and a fine of up to $15,000.
Unsworn falsification to authorities is
a fourth-degree crime which carries a sentence
of up to 18 months in state prison and a
fine of up to $10,000. The indictments are
merely accusations and the defendants are
presumed innocent until proven guilty.
DAG
Mark Kurzawa presented the Evans case to the state grand jury. DAG Candy
Cure presented the Lark and Persicano cases
to the grand jury.
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