YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Authorities arrested a former Paterson Board of Education member and onetime scout master now working as a city public works code enforcer after they caught him taking a 12-year-old boy to a Route 46 motel in South Hackensack without the boy’s guardian’s consent.
Daniel Vergara, 53, was being held on $75,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail following his arrest on endangerment charges yesterday.
Vergara, who once led the Puerto Rican Day parade in Paterson as its president, also headed a Boy Scout Troop that became know for wearing Army-style camouflage fatigues instead of the traditional blues.
His record includes a 2010 arrest on charges of taking electronics, jewelry and other valuables from someone’s home while on the job.
South Hackensack police notified members of the prosecutor’s Special Victims Unit, who interviewed the boy, after they stopped Vergara, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said.
The youngster “provided specific details regarding his relationship with [him],” he said.
The boy was not sexually abused, a law enforcement source said.
MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR
