TRENTON
– Attorney General Anne Milgram announced
that a former Hudson County sheriff’s
officer pleaded guilty today to signing false
documents so a bounty hunter could collect
additional fees for fugitives he didn’t
catch.
According to Criminal Justice
Director Deborah L. Gramiccioni, William Chadwick,
53, of Keansburg, pleaded guilty to second-degree
official misconduct before Superior Court
Judge Salem Vincent Ahto in Morris County.
Under the plea agreement,
the state will recommend that Chadwick be
sentenced to five years in state prison. In
addition, he must forfeit $5,500 in illegal
cash gifts that he admitted receiving from
the bounty hunter, Adel Mikhaeil, 44, of Jersey
City. Chadwick will be permanently barred
from public employment in New Jersey and must
cooperate in the ongoing prosecution of Mikhaeil
and other defendants in the case.
The guilty plea was taken
for the Division of Criminal Justice by Deputy
Attorney General Anthony A. Picione, who is
deputy chief of the DCJ Corruption Bureau,
and Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Manis.
In pleading guilty, Chadwick
admitted that he signed documents known as
body receipts that falsely indicated that
Mikhaeil caught certain fugitives, when the
fugitives had actually been arrested by law
enforcement officers. He admitted that he
signed six body receipts for Mikhaeil between
2003 and 2006 that either contained false
information or were blank. He further admitted
that he received illegal cash gifts from Mikhaeil
totaling $5,500.
“The defendant took
an oath to uphold the law as a sheriff’s
officer, but instead he helped this bounty
hunter to commit fraud and accepted illegal
cash gifts from him,” said Attorney
General Milgram.
Chadwick and Mikhaeil were
indicted on Oct. 1, 2008 along with Alberto
Vasquez, 40, of Apex, North Carolina, who
is a former Hudson County sheriff’s
officer, Kenneth Sisk, 48, of Bayonne, a captain
who was in charge of homicide detectives in
the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office,
and two other individuals. The indictment
resulted from an investigation by the New
Jersey State Police, the Division of Criminal
Justice and the Hudson County Prosecutor’s
Office.
In the indictment, Vasquez
was charged with signing nine false body receipts
for Mikhaiel, and Sisk was charged with signing
two false body receipts. The charges against
Vasquez and Sisk are pending.
By claiming he caught the
fugitives and presenting the false body receipts,
Mikhaeil collected higher fees from insurance
companies that insured the fugitives’
bail bonds.
While a bounty hunter does
receive a fee for locating a fugitive who
is already in custody – what is called
a “paper transfer” – the
fee is lower than for a “physical apprehension,”
when the bounty hunter actually locates and
arrests a fugitive who is at large. The fraudulent
body receipts also had the effect of reducing
the amount of bail forfeited, resulting in
savings for the insurance companies that insured
the bail bonds but a loss of funds to the
counties where the fugitive jumped bail and
the State of New Jersey, which divide the
forfeited funds.
On Feb. 5, another defendant
named in the indictment, James Irizarry, 42,
of Mohnton, Pa., pleaded guilty to commercial
bribery before Judge Ahto. Irizarry admitted
he took bribes from Mikhaeil in return for
hiring Mikhaeil to recover fugitives for his
former employer and for approving Mikhaeil’s
invoices for payment. Irizarry worked for
a firm that locates fugitives for insurance
companies that insure bail bonds. The state
will recommend that he be sentenced to probation,
conditioned on him serving 364 days in jail
and forfeiting $5,000 Mikhaeil gave him.
Trevor Williams, 36, of Jersey
City, a bounty hunter employed by Mikhaeil,
was charged in the indictment with helping
to cover up $92,000 in commercial bribes that
Mikhaeil allegedly paid to an insurance company
executive in return for business. The charges
against Williams are pending.
The insurance company executive,
John Sullivan, 42, the former vice president
for Sirius America Insurance Company, pleaded
guilty on May 30, 2008 to commercial bribery
and financial facilitation of criminal activity.
He faces a 364-day jail term as a condition
of a sentence of probation.
Another employee of Mikhaeil’s,
George Formoe, 42, of Ridgefield Park, pleaded
guilty to covering up those payments and faces
probation.
The charges against the remaining
defendants are merely accusations and they
are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
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