NJ businessman admits bribing Newark deputy mayor for city land

🔷 NJ businessman bribed deputy major

🔷 Bribes included cash and high-end jewelry from pawn shop

🔷 In exchange, official helped broker city land deals

A 64-year-old businessman admitted bribing a Newark official in exchange for illegal help buying and redeveloping city-owned properties.

Fittingly, the dirty business happened near a toilet, investigators said.

Irwin Sablosky, of Springfield, pleaded guilty in US District Court to honest services fraud and bribery in connection with bribes given to Carmelo Garcia, then a Newark deputy mayor and director of the Newark Department of Economic and Housing Development.

Sablosky was indicted three years ago alongside his business partner, 56-year-old Frank Valvano Jr., of Florham Park, and Garcia, a resident of Hoboken.

In addition to cash, Sablosky and Valvano gifted the 59-year-old Garcia with jewelry, including multiple high-end watches and chains, from their pawnbroker and jewelry business.

Garcia has not only worked in various Newark positions, he was also a one-term state assemblyman and former housing authority executive director in Hoboken and Irvington.

In exchange, Garcia used his official positions and influence within the city of Newark and the NCEDC to advance real estate development matters of interest to Sablosky and Valvano.

In one 2018 incident in a New Jersey restaurant restroom, Garcia was given an envelope stuffed with $25,000 in cash, supplied by Valvano through an intermediary, prosecutors said.

Phone records and text messages secured by law enforcement show extensive communication between Garcia, Valvano, Sablosky, throughout this time, including texts in which Garcia arranged to personally collect cash provided by the duo, US Attorney Philip Sellinger said.

Sablosky faces up to 20 years in prison for conviction on honest services fraud. The bribery charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years.

His sentencing was set for Feb. 20, 2025.

All charges are also punishable by a fine of $250,000 or twice the amount of the pecuniary gain from the offense.

Garcia has been awaiting sentencing after previously pleading guilty to two conspiracy and honest services fraud charges.

Valvano’s case has remained pending in federal court.

“As he admitted in court, Irwin Sablosky provided cash and jewelry to Carmelo Garcia, a former Newark deputy mayor and director of the Newark Department of Economic and Housing Development in exchange for Garcia’s use of his influence to assist Sablosky’s acquisition of various Newark-owned properties for redevelopment, defrauding the people of Newark of their right to the official’s honest services,” Sellinger said in a written statement.

“Irwin Sablosky’s selfish actions and severe abuse of power violated the public trust and risked jeopardizing the integrity of the federal process for fair and honest acquisitions of government owned properties to further his own self interests,” Special Agent-in-Charge Vicky Vazquez, of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Inspector General, said in a written statement.

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