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Thomas Rica is also barred from accepting public employment for life.
Superior Court Judge Patrick J. Roma (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
Half the money that Rica paid today came from family members, including $25,000 loaned him by his brother, Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Daniel Keitel said.
Nearly four thousand dollars in cash that was seized from his house when he was arrested was added to the total.
Rica’s brother is also giving him a job that presumably will help him pay $2,000 in monthly restitution on the $390,000 balance.
“I’m not saying I’m enthusiastic about these arrangements,” Superior Court Judge Patrick Roma said. “But these matters are not easy.
Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Daniel Keitel, Detective Matthew McGowan (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
“There are always proof issues with difficulties. You want to dispense punishment, but restitution is important and you do the best you can to make the village whole,” Roma said. “Under other circumstances, the money that’s being restored to Ridgewood might not be available.”
The judge also said that probation was needed to deter others from similar crimes. Any violation could send Rica to state prison for three to five years, he warned.
Rica, of Hawthorne, admitted in March that he went without authorization into the Village Hall room where the money was kept and, over the course of more than two years, walked out with hundreds of thousands of dollars in quarters.
Rica was fired in January 2013 after the thefts initially were discovered. A year-long investigation then turned up the larger dollar amount.
Immediately before Rica was sentenced, defense attorney Robert Galantucci handed over the $64,337.55 check, which Keitel gave Bergen County Prosecutor’s Detective Matthew McGowan to hand-deliver to the Ridgewood village manager.
Calculating the village’s loss was difficult because there was no way to document how many quarters an individual parking meter produces, the prosecutor said.
“We are talking here about more than a million quarters,” he said.
Investigators instead went through Rica’s bank deposits because “much of the funds were in cash,” Keitel said.
Galantucci, in supporting the argument against jail, quoted the Pew Charitable Trust and Newt Gingrich.
“Newt Gingrich said this is a better way,” the defense lawyer said. “We have too many people in jail today, and every one of them costs us $50,000 per year per person.
Galantucci said prison also would be an extreme hardship on Rica’s wife and three children.
“The prosecution has worked to see that society is the beneficiary of this agreement, and it is consistent with our ideas of redemption,” he said.
Thomas Rica (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)
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