A former Hudson County Parks Department director has admitted to his role in a $1.5 million vendor kickback scheme he was charged in back in March, U.S. Attorney William Frazer announced.
By John Heinis/Hudson County View
Russell Fallacara, 59, of Bayonne, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Claire C. Cecchi to an information charging him with conspiring to defraud Hudson County of the right to officials’ honest services, Frazer said in a statement.
From 2019 through 2024, the conspiracy involved more than $1.5 million in bribes and kickbacks, according to Fallacara’s indictment.
The payments were made by business owner William A. Murray (Murray), so that his company, Paramus-based Murray Paving & Concrete LLC, would be awarded contracts to work on various Hudson County Parks Department projects.
That included but was but was not limited to landscape maintenance, paving, and general contracting projects.
The bribes and kickbacks often came in the form of cash payments to Hudson County officials, including Fallacara and former Parks Department Director Thomas DeLeo, who was also charged backed in March, as HCV first reported.
Fallacara received over $400,000 in cash bribes and kickback payments. At other times, the bribes and kickbacks came in the form of free home repairs and renovations for both DeLeo and Fallacara.
In exchange for these bribes and kickbacks, at the time that each served as the director of the Hudson County Parks Department, DeLeo and Fallacara each took official action to approve contracts awarded to Murray’s company by Hudson County.
“On occasion, Individual-1 and Fallacara took steps to conceal the corrupt nature of these financial transactions. For example, in or around January 2023, Individual-1 provided an associate of Fallacara’s with a check for $300,000, issued from Company-1’s bank account,” Fallacara’s indictment states.
“The associate then provided Individual-1 with $300,000 in cash, which Individual-1 then gave to Fallacara. This $300,000 payment was given to Fallacara in exchange for Fallacara having taken official action with regard to approving contracts awarded to Company-1 by Hudson County.”
Hudson County said that Fallacara resigned for “personal reasons” in late January 2024, with Denise D’Alessandro serving as the acting director while remaining the head of the Department of Roads and Public Property, as only HCV reported.
Fallacara was one of 16 arrested in an FBI sting in August 2005, with then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie’s office alleging that Fallacara was “was an associate of the Genovese Crime Family and part of the crew headed by Joseph Scarbrough.”
Then an inspector for the now defunct Jersey City Incinerator Authority, Fallacara was accused of being “involved in the sports bookmaking operation, football ticket operation, and the collection of unlawful debt.”
He pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy and was sentenced to 27 months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge William J. Martini in August 2006, public records show.
On March 3rd, DeLeo pleaded guilty before Cecchi to a two-count information charging him with conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Then on March 17th, Murray pleaded guilty before Judge Cecchi to an information charging him with conspiracy to commit honest services fraud. These pleas were not previously made public.
The conspiracy to commit honest services fraud charge that Fallacara pleaded guilty to carries a maximum penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment.
Frazer credited special agents of the FBI’s Newark Field Office, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Northeast Region Office of Inspector General with the investigation leading to today’s conviction.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Francesca Liquori, of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Special Prosecutions Division, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Goldberg, Chief of the Narcotics and International Trafficking Unit.