Published: Tuesday, October 05, 2010, 8:10 AM    
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/10/prosecutors_say_ridgefield_may.html

RIDGEFIELD — Two meetings. That’s all it took before a Bergen County mayor agreed to take bribes from the garrulous informant at the center of the largest federal sting in New Jersey history, a federal prosecutor told jurors in Newark Monday.

Anthony R. Suarez, the mayor of Ridgefield, is charged with bribery and extortion for allegedly taking $10,000 in exchange for promising to support building projects proposed by the informant, who masqueraded as a developer trying to buy off politicians.

"It took only two meetings," Mark J. McCarren, an assistant U.S. Attorney said during his opening argument.

But Suarez’s lawyer said the mayor never knowingly took an illicit dime. He turned down $10,000 cash. He never deposited a $10,000 check. And, ultimately, the 43-year-old Democrat kept just $2,500, which he believed was a legitimate donation to his legal defense fund, his lawyer, John Michael Vazquez, said.

"How many times does a sitting mayor have to reject a developer’s money ... before they realize that a sitting mayor is innocent," Vazquez said.

Suarez is the third defendant to face trial on charges stemming from the bribery and money-laundering probe that led to charges against 46 people, including five rabbis, three mayors, two state legislators and one man accused of trying to sell a human kidney. Twenty defendants in the case have pleaded guilty. Two others were convicted at trial. Suarez, who narrowly survived a recall last month, is the last of the politicians charged who is still in office.

Like all the others, he was allegedly ensnared by Solomon Dwek, the son of a rabbi who became the single most productive informant ever to work undercover in New Jersey. He began cooperating with the FBI in 2006 after being charged with a $50 million bank fraud.

With the rapid-fire patter of a traveling salesman, Dwek worked his way across the state wearing a tiny hidden video camera — perhaps disguised as a shirt button or tie clip — as he tried to convince rabbis into laundering money and public officials to take bribes.

Suarez, a lawyer who grew up in Ridgefield, met Dwek in 2008 through his co-defendant, Vincent Tabbachino, a tax preparer and former police officer from nearby Guttenberg. Suarez was raising money to fend off a lawsuit from a political rival. Dwek said he would contribute. But in exchange, he wanted help securing permits to build in Ridgefield, authorities said.

"I wanna make sure I got a friend that will support my stuff," Dwek allegedly told Tabbachino during a meeting at Patsy’s Italian Restaurant in Fairview.

But after the meeting — when Tabbachino handed Suarez a FedEx envelope stuffed with $10,000 from Dwek — the mayor said no, according to Vazquez. Instead, Tabbachino gave the mayor a $10,000 check. Suarez accepted it. But after conferring with his lawyer at the time, Henry E. Klingeman, the mayor wrote "void" on the check and told Dwek he wouldn’t give his projects preferential treatment, Vazquez said.