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1 year in jail, 5 years of probation, and must repay the money
Marvin Laws of Atlantic City, who formerly worked as a local administrator of the state Home Energy Assistance Program was sentenced Thursday to a year in county jail and five years of probation for stealing $9,062 from the program by filing false benefit applications.
Laws, 56, was sentenced by state Superior Court Judge Mark H. Sandson in Mays Landing. He pleaded guilty on Oct. 17 to third-degree theft by deception. Sandson also ordered Laws to pay restitution of $9,062 to the state Department of Community Affairs. Laws was required to forfeit his job with the Pleasantville Recreation Department as a result of his guilty plea and is permanently barred from public employment in New Jersey.
In pleading guilty, Laws admitted that between August 2003 and May 2008, while employed as an HEA benefits manager by Atlantic Human Resources, a nonprofit contracted by the DCA to administer the HEA program in Atlantic County, he used his position to enter false information into the database in order to unlawfully qualify for and obtain $9,062 in benefits.
Investigations by the state Division of Criminal Justice Corruption Bureau into fraud in the HEA program previously resulted in prison or jail sentences for a Paulsboro-based heating oil supplier and four women who were local HEA administrators.
Deputy Attorneys General David M. Fritch and Robert Czepiel prosecuted Laws and the other HEA cases. The investigations have been conducted and coordinated for the Division of Criminal Justice Corruption Bureau by Lt. Keith Lerner, Sgt. Robert Feriozzi Jr., Det. Andrea Salvatini, Det. Anthony J. Luyber, Deputy Chief of Detectives Neal Cohen, Analyst Alison Callery and Fritch and Czepiel.
The HEA Program is administered by DCA and contracted local agencies. The HEA Program encompasses two separate programs, the federally funded Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the state-funded Universal Service Fund Program (USF). The LIHEAP program provides direct financial assistance to beneficiaries in the form of payments to utility companies and to fuel vendors to help low-income households meet the cost of home heating and medically necessary cooling. The USF program assists such households by providing credits against their natural gas and electric bills.
—TOM HESTER SR., NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
