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Alex Mendez, 48, has been awaiting trial in a case, stemming from 2020 council races, that has undergone a series of one delay after another.
The contests were conducted entirely by mail-in ballots as COVID was spreading.
The new charges involved what the attorney general described on Oct. 25 as a hare-brained plot to steal ballots from mailboxes outside people’s homes, toss out those that didn’t vote for him and replace them with those that did.
Hard as it may be to believe, Mendez at one point watched from his wife’s car as a huge bag stuffed with fraudulent ballots was dumped into a Haledon mailbox a week before the May 2020 election, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin said.
That, of course, proved to be both a red flag and a smoking gun, investigators said.
Perez, who was chosen City Council president a few months ago, told reporters on Wednesday that authorities in Trenton brought the case after they couldn’t make the original charges stick. He also pledged to fight it to the end.
Also charged are Yohanny Mendez, 48, campaign manager Omar Ledesma, 35, and political supporter Iris Rigo, 38. Like Mendez, they’re all from Paterson.
They conspired, Platkin said, to “rig an election in their favor and to deprive the voters of Paterson of having their voices heard.”
Authorities have since dropped charges against two defendants in the original case, Shelim Khakique and Abu Razyen. Another, Councilman Michael Jackson, is still under indictment.
The new charges follow alleged attempts by the defendants to torpedo the probe, state authorities noted.
New Jersey law allows what’s known as a “bearer” to collect a completed ballot and then bring it – on behalf of the voter – to the particular county’s board of elections.
The bearer must complete a certification on the ballot envelope in the presence of the voter as part of the process.
A bearer may collect and deliver ballots for no more than three voters in an election, and a candidate in the election cannot under any circumstances serve as a bearer.
Several ballots were collected by Mendez himself, Platkin said. Many gathered by him and his campaign staff weren’t sealed, the attorney general added.
All were brought to Mendez’s campaign headquarters and examined, he said. Mendez’s wife destroyed those that didn’t include votes for him for the at-large 3rd Ward council seat, then replaced them with ballots that did, Platkin said.
For the replacements, the defendants used ballots stolen from voters’ mailboxes in specific city neighborhoods where the candidate’s primary election opponent, former Councilman William McKoy, had support, the attorney general said.
Then, on May 5, 2020, a week before Election Day, Mendez watched from his wife’s car as a large bag stuffed with hundreds of ballots was emptied into a mailbox -- not in Paterson but in neighboring Haledon, Platkin said.
Mendez’s campaign attorney then wrote to the Passaic Board of Elections asking that the Haledon ballots be counted, he said.
Hundreds more ballots were also found in a mailbox in Paterson, Platkin noted.
His office was notified of the mailbox stuffing by U.S. postal inspectors, the attorney general said.
A state grand jury indicted Mendez on election fraud charges on Feb. 24, 2021. He, his wife and others were then secretly recorded conspiring to pressure witnesses into lying, Platkin said.
One of those witnesses, Ninoska Adames, 33, of Paterson, was charged by state authorities with illegally completing and submitting mail-in election ballots and then lying to state investigators, the attorney general also announced on Wednesday.
Mendez is charged with:
- conspiracy to commit election fraud;
- fraud in casting a mail-in vote;
- unauthorized possession of ballots;
- tampering with public records;
- falsifying or tampering with records;
- forgery;
- conspiracy/tampering with or fabricating physical evidence;
- soliciting or procuring or assisting unlawful registration and other violations of election law;
- conspiracy to commit witness tampering.
Yohanny Mendez, 48, and the others are charged with several of the same counts.
“We take the integrity of elections seriously,” said Thomas Eicher, the executive director of the attorney general’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability, which conducted the investigation. “Candidates need to win elections on their own merits, and on the strength of their platforms and political campaigns – not based on deceit and fraud.”
Deputy Attorney General Eric Cohen of the OPIA is prosecuting the case, Platkin said. The investigation “received critical assistance” from Mary Catherine Ryan, a former chief assistant Passaic County prosecutor and current assistant attorney general.
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