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Jeanmarie Zahore, 56, of Rahway told a U.S. District Court judge in Newark via teleconference that he made the corrupt payments when Willis Edwards III was the acting business administrator for the city of Orange.
Zahore received a $350,000 contract without competitive bidding from the Orange City Council in September 2015 for JZ Nettech, a computer consulting business that he operated from his home, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said.
The job called for installing a computer networking system at a municipal complex that housed the Orange Municipal Court and police department, he said.
Edwards, as an Orange public official, “assisted Zahore in obtaining the contract for the Municipal Complex Project and facilitated the payment of money,” Carpenito said.
Edwards then “agreed to arrange an advance on the money from Orange for Zahore because Zahore did not have the money to begin working on the Municipal Complex,” the U.S. attorney said.
Typically, vendors aren’t prepaid to buy supplies for a project.
But at Edwards’s instruction, Zahore emailed an Orange employee an invoice for $115,000 – and got the money that same day, Carpenito said.
Zahore and Edwards then went out together to celebrate, he said.
Zahore collected two more payments for the job -- one for $140,000 and the other for $95,000, Carpenito said.
Edwards more than once told Zahore that he’d taken care of him and should “consider that and do something,” the U.S. attorney said.
Zahore said he considered the comments demands for payment, so he gave Edwards $10,000 in cash.
When Edwards balked at the amount, Zahore said, he threw in another 10 grand.
Edwards, a Democrat who served a single Assembly term in the early 2000s and now lives in Georgia, was indicted by a federal grand jury this summer following an FBI investigation into city government.
He’s charged with 28 counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud, bribery and theft from a federally funded local government.
U.S. District Judge Kevin McNulty scheduled a March 3 sentencing for Zahore’s guilty plea to making corrupt payments to an agent of a local government receiving federal funds.
Carpenito credited special agents of the FBI, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and IRS-Criminal Investigation with the investigation leading to the guilty plea, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Cari Fais and J Fortier Imbert of his Special Prosecutions Division.
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