Charity

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Tuesday, August 27, 1991

The Record (New Jersey) | Four Star B | NEWS | Page B01

Two men from a fund-raising firm hired by the Hackensack Police Athletic League were arrested Monday on charges that they passed themselves off as officers to solicit $1,000 from a city businessman, police said.
John Simonelli of Pawtucket, R.I., was arrested about noon after he gave John Carrino of Race Excavations Co. on Sussex Street a receipt for a $1,000 check that Carrino gave him in the presence of a detective, police said.
When the detective, who was posing as one of the owners of the excavation company, asked Simonelli why the department did not send a uniformed officer, he told the detective all the uniformed officers were busy, police said.
Mark Carter of Feeding Hills, Mass., was arrested shortly after Simonelli at the Lyndhurst offices of the fund-raising firm, T.M.S. Fund Raising Co., of 302 Ridge Road.
Police said they taped a telephone conversation between Carter and Carrino in which Carter told Carrino several times that he was a member of the Hackensack Police Department.
Simonelli and Carter both were charged with wrongful impersonation of a police officer and theft by deception. They were being held in the Bergen County Jail on $7,500 bail each.
Carrino’s donation would entitle his business advertisement to be placed on the inside front cover of the Hackensack PAL “Drug and Alcohol Prevention Handbook and Business Directory,” the receipt said.
No one answered the telephone or returned a message left on the answering machine at the PAL’s Hackensack office. Representatives for T.M.S. could not be reached for comment. Carrino also could not be reached Monday.
Patrolman Charles Redstone, president of the Hackensack local of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, said that although the athletic league has “Hackensack” as part of its name, it is in no way connected to the Hackensack Police Department.
The athletic league’s fund campaign often confuses residents and businesses that the PBA solicits during the fall to raise money for charity, he said. People often call the PBA to say they had already contributed money to the “Hackensack police,” he said.
Complaints of deception by telephone solicitors for police-related groups are common statewide, officials say. Investigators say the solicitors, who work on commission, often imply, if they don’t state it outright, that they are members of the local police department.
“Most people, when they hear it’s a police department, will donate money because they think it is a worthwhile cause,” said Redstone.

Keywords: FRAUD; POLICE; HACKENSACK; CHARITY

ID: 17353541 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)