Paterson Mayor Joey Torres pleads guilty to corruption charges

JERSEY CITY – Paterson Mayor Joey Torres pleaded guilty to corruption charges Friday afternoon, despite saying for months after his indictment that he would be vindicated in the courts.

The proposed agreement will require Torres, 58, to step down from the mayor’s job and serve up to five years in prison.

Torres’ options were severely limited when the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office last April offered his co-defendants, three city employees who were filmed doing work at his home and a family business, plea bargains that would allow them to avoid jail if they testified against the mayor.

Torres announced his decision in front of Superior Court Judge Sheila Venable in Jersey City.

Torres will be replaced as mayor on an interim basis by City Council President Ruby Cotton. She will remain in the top job until Paterson’s mayoral election in May 2018, unless her colleagues pick someone else to fill the job during the next 30 days.

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Torres pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to commit official misconduct, while the five other charges against him were dropped as part of the deal. Torres faces a five-year sentence, but the deal did not set a minimum prison term and he could be eligible for parole after about a year, his lawyer said. The mayor’s sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 3.

Torres and his co-defendants are required to repay the City of Paterson $10,000 as restitution for overtime the workers received while performing tasks for the mayor.

“That’s correct,” Torres responded time after time as his lawyer asked him questions about the crime he committed during the guilty plea. As he spoke, Torres kept his head bowed, looking down at the court table in front of him. 

Torres left the courtroom before co-defendants Timothy Hanlon, Joseph Mania and Imad “Eddie” Mowaswes made their guilty pleas, deals that will force them to lose their city jobs and serve probation.

Lawyers for the four defendants said that the plea agreements did not address whether they would lose their state pensions. The decision will be made by a state pension board.

Standing on the steps outside the Hudson County Courthouse, the mayor said to a crowd of news reporters, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I regret the actions that I took. I’m sorry.”

John Azzarello, one of Torres’ two lawyers on the case, told reporters that he hoped the mayor would not be remembered for the crimes he committed during “an eight-month snippet” but instead for “over 30 years of public service.”

"I would like to take this opportunity to express my most sincere apologies to the citizens of the great City of Paterson, for the serious offense I have committed," Torres said in a statement released Friday night. "I take full responsibility for them, my actions and lack of judgment."

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Torres also had a message to the youth of Paterson: "I’d just like to say to the young people who have a calling to serve, please do not lose heart, do not lose hope…believe in your calling and in the great Silk City."

The prosecutors handling the case wanted Torres to be forced to leave office immediately but the mayor’s lawyers asked Venable to allow him to remain in the job until Monday so the city has a smooth transition. 

Deputy Attorney General Jeff Manis questioned why “a convicted criminal” should remain in power in the state’s third largest city for another three days. Torres’ lawyer, Ricardo Solano, argued that it would be in the best interests of the city for the change to happen Monday.

Venable decided to wait until Monday to make that decision, which effectively allowed Torres to stay in office for the extra days he requested.

Under the plea, state authorities said they would not pursue allegations that Torres misused his political campaign funds to benefit a family business.

Venable initially sought decisions from Torres and his co-defendants about the plea offers at about 2 p.m. But they weren’t ready. Azzarello told the judge that the case was “near” conclusion but that some issue still needed to be ironed out.

The mayor and his co-defendants spent the next three hours in a hallway and conference room outside Venable’s court, engaging in hushed discussions, reading legal papers and finally killing time as the judge handled another case.

Friday’s developments will shape Paterson’s May 2018 mayoral election, a contest in which about 10 people have expressed interest in running, including four of the current City Council members.

The criminal case against Torres stems from a falling-out he had with real estate investor Charles Florio in 2015 over the developer’s building applications. Within months of buying tickets for Torres’ inaugural ball, an angry Florio hired a private investigator to follow the mayor around for about a year.

The investigator recorded video of various city employees doing work at the mayor’s Arlington Avenue home and a beer warehouse owned by Torres’ daughter and nephew.

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Soon after NBC News broadcast some of those recordings in March 2016, the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office convened a grand jury and a year later unveiled a six-count indictment against Torres and three Paterson public works employees – Hanlon, Mania and Mowaswes.

The charges in the original indictment were conspiracy, official misconduct, committing a pattern of official misconduct, theft, tempering with public records and falsifying public records. Authorities accused the mayor of having the employees do the work at the “Quality Beer” warehouse on East 15th Street while they were being paid by city taxpayers.

Public payroll records show that the three employees indicted with Torres had collected a total of about $272,000 in overtime during the 2015 and 2016 fiscal years, the time period during which Florio had the mayor followed. Only a portion of that overtime was accrued while the workers were filmed at the beer business, the records show.

None of the charges in the indictment involves the video showing employees doing odd jobs at the mayor’s home. Torres has said the workers shown at his house were simply longtime friends doing him personal favors.

Authorities have not filed any charges against the mayor’s daughter, Clarissa Torres, or his nephew, Manuel Torres.

As the state Attorney General’s Office conducted its probe of Torres, federal authorities have been doing their own investigation. Last November, FBI agents executed search warrants at Torres’ City Hall office and other city departments for municipal records about Paterson’s use of $180,000 in federal housing funds.

After that, federal investigators issued a series of subpoenas for city documents involving a variety of topics, including the permits for repairs done on the mayor’s home last fall, payment records for various firms that did business with city, documents on all federal housing grants received by Paterson in recent years and records about the municipal tire recycling program.

The city complied with the most recent federal subpoena by provided a federal grand jury with a new batch of records on Sept. 12, officials said.

Federal and state authorities have not divulged what impact the proceedings in the AG’s corruption case would have on the federal probes.

Torres had been a Paterson councilman for 12 years when he won his first mayoral election in 2002, a contest in which he ran as the reform candidate seeking to oust an incumbent, Martin Barnes, who was under indictment at the time on federal corruption charges.

During Torres’ first eight years in office, Paterson’s crime statistics increased and the collapse of the region’s real estate market took a heavy toll on the city. Under his watch, the Center City Mall was built but Paterson’s overall tax base declined.

Despite having a large advantage in campaign funds, Torres was ousted in the 2010 mayoral election won by then-councilman Jeffery Jones. After his defeat, Torres landed a six-figure job as business administrator in Jackson Township, a GOP bastion in Ocean County. Torres also took on a $36,000 part-time position as director of the Bunker Hill Special Improvement District in Paterson.

But Jones’ administration struggled, partly because of fiscal problems he inherited, resulting in the 2011 layoffs of 125 police officers and 275 other city employees.

In 2014, Torres prevailed in an eight-person mayoral election, winning even though his main rival, Councilman Andre Sayegh, was endorsed by the chairman of the state Democratic Party, John Currie, and by an influential congressman, Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr.

Shortly after his victory, Torres filed his retirement papers from the Jackson Township position and began collecting a $68,800 annual state pension based largely on service time he accumulated in Paterson. After taking office, Torres’ staff decided that his pension status entitled him to free city health benefits as a retiree, even though he was on the active payroll as mayor.

During his third mayoral term, Torres produced Paterson’s first municipal tax cut in six years in last year’s budget. His administration resurfaced scores of Paterson streets under a controversial $35 million debt program, but he has struggle to fulfill his campaign goal of revitalizing abandoned properties.

Under Torres, the numbers of reported violent crimes in Paterson reached three-decade lows, but the homicide numbers have surpassed anything the city experienced since the 1980s.