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Prosecutor rigged the deck against ex-Carlstadt mayor, lawyer says

ONLY ON CLIFFVIEW PILOT: Prosecutors deliberately kept a grand jury from hearing former Carlstadt Mayor William Roseman’s defense to charges that he and his ex-wife scammed health benefits from the town after their divorce, Roseman’s lawyer told a judge in Hackensack.

Photo Credit: Cliffview Pilot
Photo Credit: Cliffview Pilot


Roseman

“Not only was that opportunity denied him by the prosecutor, but when a seemingly troubled grand jury asked questions about what the mayor’s side of the story was, they were instructed by the prosecutor that the Mayor elected to remain silent and invoke his Fifth Amendment Rights,” said attorney Patricia Prezioso of Florham Park.

“This was not true,” said Prezioso, a former assistant state attorney general. “William Roseman has been requesting over and over again to be permitted to testify before the grand jury.”

Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli had a terse response: We don’t try cases in the [media]. She has filed her motion and should be
preparing for trial.”


All told, Roseman and Lori Lewin are charged with four counts of theft and two counts of official misconduct (See: Public pays for free drugs, dental for ex-mayor’s ex).

Even though they were divorced in July 2000, Roseman didn’t make the proper 60-day notice to the borough benefits administrator, Molinelli said.

As a result, he said, taxpayers paid for $4,000 worth of dental work for Lewin and $7,000 worth of prescriptions through January 2008.

In a motion filed today in Superior Court in Hackensack, Prezioso called the charges “fundamentally unfair and defective.”

She said she told the prosecutor “on what turned out to be the very morning of the last presentation, during a status conference, that Mr. Roseman wanted to testify.”

The grand jurors returned a superseding indictment, which Prezioso asked the judge to dismiss.

“One really has to question why the prosecutor does not want Mr. Roseman to testify, and why he then went to great lengths in the grand jury to tell the grand jurors that he had a right to remain silent,” she said.

Roseman’s divorce decree makes clear that he had no obligation to provide his ex-wife with benefits; she was insured through her employer, the attorney said.

Molinelli


Health care providers who had served her during the marriage retained the benefit information and charges were unknowingly submitted to the Carlstadt plan, Prezioso added.

“Once discovered, an audit was conducted at the Mayor’s urging and it was found that almost every ex-spouse of a Carlstadt town employee remained on the plan until this situation came to light,” she said. “Further, [Lewin] has made restitution, which partially came from [her] own insurance company for those claims that were not time-barred. Even her insurance company recognized this as a mistake.

“There was no crime—it was a mistake,” Prezioso said. “The family had a number of health-care issues and these mistaken submissions to the Carlstadt health plan were not discovered.

“After the divorce, my client informed the assistant to the insurance official that he was divorced, he filed a new W-4 with the town indicating his change in status, and filed his public disclosure forms each year since the divorce indicating that he did not have a spouse.”

Carlstadt is a small town, she said, and the divorce was known throughout Borough Hall.

“To imply that the mayor and his ex-wife hid their divorce and conspired together to keep her on the town plan — especially when she had her own plan in effect — is ridiculous,” Prezioso said. “There was no deception, no official misconduct, no theft, and no crime.”

“These types of errors happen to hundreds of public employees each year. This situation in not unique to my client, except for the fact that the prosecutor is seeking to put him in [prison],” she added. “There is an abundance of evidence to support that this was a mistake, and as such it is difficult to conceive that his family has to go through the humiliation and stress of this process.

“We continue to urge the Bergen County Prosecutor to reconsider and drop this prosecution.”

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