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TRENTON
– Attorney General Paula T. Dow and
Criminal Justice Director Stephen J. Taylor
announced that a former local administrator
of the New Jersey Home Energy Assistance
(HEA) Program was sentenced to prison today
for stealing from the program.
According
to Director Taylor, Nicole Victor, 38, of
Paulsboro, was sentenced to five years in
state prison by Superior Court Judge M.
Christine Allen-Jackson in Gloucester County.
She was ordered to pay restitution of $11,705
and is permanently barred from public employment
in New Jersey. Victor pleaded guilty on
July 19, 2010 to second-degree official
misconduct.
Victor
was formerly an HEA administrator in the
Paulsboro office of Tri-County Community
Action, the local agency handling HEA applications
in Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland Counties.
In pleading guilty, Victor admitted that
between June 2005 and May 2008, she used
her position to file fictitious HEA applications
to generate benefits for herself. She admitted
she fraudulently obtained $11,705 by filing
three false HEA applications. Victor worked
for Tri-County from September 2002 through
May 2008. She was hired as an HEA aide,
and became an HEA supervisor in 2004.
Deputy
Attorney General Susan Kase handled the
sentencing for the Division of Criminal
Justice Corruption Bureau. Deputy Attorneys
General David M. Fritch and Robert Czepiel
prosecuted the case. The charges resulted
from an investigation by the Division of
Criminal Justice, conducted with assistance
from the Department of Community Affairs.
The investigation was conducted and coordinated
for the Division of Criminal Justice Corruption
Bureau by Lt. Keith Lerner, Sgt. Robert
Ferriozzi, Detective Andrea Salvatini, Detective
Anthony Luyber, Deputy Chief of Detectives
Neal Cohen, Analyst Alison Callery and Deputy
Attorneys General Fritch and Robert Czepiel.
Three
other local administrators of the HEA Program
have been charged with fraud involving the
program as a result of investigations by
the Division of Criminal Justice and the
Department of Community Affairs. , 25, of Chester, Pa., a former
HEA manager for Tri-County’s Salem
and Gloucester County offices, pleaded guilty
to official misconduct and was sentenced
to five years in prison. Charges are pending
against a third women, Denise Nicole Johnson,
36, of Paulsboro, a former administrator
in Tri-County’s Paulsboro office,
and a man, Marvin Laws, 55, of Atlantic
City, who was employed as an HEA benefits
manager by Atlantic Human Resources, a nonprofit
contracted by the DCA to administer the
HEA program in Atlantic County. In addition,
Thomas J. Harris, 67, of Woolwich, the owner
of a Paulsboro-based heating oil company,
was sentenced to four years in prison as
a result of the investigations.
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