YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A federal judge in Newark today released a Jersey City police officer on $250,000 bond, with home confinement and electronic monitoring, during an initial appearance on charges that he stole more than 600,000 cigarettes from a trailer and conspired to rob $20,000 from a drug courier.
Mario Rodriguez, 39, of Jersey City was charged with conspiring with 48-year-old Anthony Roman, who was arrested by federal agents at his Jersey City home on Friday.
According to a complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Newark:
Rodriguez and an individual working for the FBI as a confidential informant drove to a warehouse in Secaucus on July 3, used bolt cutters to break into a trailer and swiped 50 cases containing the cigarettes, along with six television sets.
What Rodriguez didn’t know, the complaint says, is that federal agents had parked the trailer there and were watching – then followed them to a parking lot on Staten Island, where Rodriguez “made several phone calls seeking buyers for the TVs.”
The pair met the informant’s associate – actually an undercover officer – in the parking lot to get the $5,000 payment for the cigarettes. Rodriguez kept $3,000 of the cash and three of the TVs, the complaint alleges.
A week later, it says, Rodriguez and the confidential informant met with law enforcement agents and “discussed the possibility of robbing a drug courier” – actually another undercover officer.
They met again a month later to discuss the plan, the complaint says.
“The undercover officers told Rodriguez the courier would be delivering cocaine to them that day in a Jersey City mall parking lot in exchange for a $20,000 payment, after which Rodriguez would steal the money,” it says. “Rodriguez called Roman to help him with the robbery.”
Both men drove a Toyota RAV-4 to the spot on July 24, where federal agents had “established surveillance and staged the car containing $20,000 cash in a plastic bag.”
After identifying themselves as police officers, Rodriguez and Roman robbed the woman they thought was a drug courier.
Later that day, Rodriguez, the CI and the undercover “met in a hotel room at a Pennsylvania casino to split the cash,” the complaint says.
U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman credited special agents of the FBI; the Special Investigations Unit of the Jersey City Police Department; the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office; and criminal investigators from his office with the investigation leading to the charges.
He also thanked the Bayonne Police Department, Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, the IRS, Department of Labor Office of Inspector General, and the N.J. State Commission of Investigation for their “significant contributions” to the investigation.
Handling the case for the government is Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan W. Romankow of Fishman’s Organized Crime/Gangs Unit in Newark.