North Bergen athletic director Jerry Maietta (l.) and guidance counselor Ralph Marino are among those charged.
Posted on 03/26/2008 10:28:00 PM PDT by Coleus
The athletic director and a guidance counselor at North Bergen High School were arrested Tuesday in a drug and gambling ring sting that authorities say was controlled by the Genovese crime family. Athletic Director Jerry Maietta and Guidance Counselor Ralph Marino were among 45 swept up in raids that began at 5 a.m. Tuesday. Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli described the two as lower level operatives in an expansive network of bookies, package holders, drug dealers and drug distributors. Mark Iafelice, 49, of Edgewater; Brian DiGuilmi, 48, of Emerson; James W. Skinner, 69, of Allenwood; and his son James J. Skinner Jr., 40, of Hazlet, led the operation and have connections with the Genovese family, Molinelli said.
"Individuals in this business – particularly individuals in the Genovese crime family – don’t usually give you a lot of time to pay back the money," he said. "You place a bet with somebody and if you don’t pay, it could be dangerous for you, for your family, for your children." The Prosecutor’s Office, New Jersey State Police and the East Rutherford Police Department have been investigating gambling in southern Bergen County since August after a confidential informant told authorities where to place a bet. At least one undercover officer frequented a bookie and eventually infiltrated the network, which led investigators up the chain to Iafelice, DiGuilmi and the Skinners.
On Tuesday, police executed 24 search warrants that led to the seizure of $5 million, five vehicles and at least five pounds of marijuana in Bergen, Hudson, Monmouth and Ocean counties. In North Bergen, the arrests have led the schools superintendent to reconsider the future of the two employees. "Wow," said North Bergen Superintendent Robert Dandorph. "I am absolutely blown away about it … If all this is true, I would be nervous about their future."
Dandorph said that after confirming the news with Molinelli’s office today, he will meet with the school board’s president and lawyer to begin implementing their own investigation. Marino, a guidance counselor at the high school, has been a fixture of the North Bergen sports scene for years and his arrest Tuesday came as a shock to those who know him.
It is shocking that this took place in New Jersey.
Jerry “the jock” Maietta and Grinnin’ Ralph Marino of the Bergen Crime family.
Nothing evokes New Jersey like the smell of corruption in the morning.
Nothing evokes New Jersey like the smell of corruption in the morning.
Just when you think you've heard it all.....
Is this the wonderful “socialization” homeschoolers are missing?
My mother is an alumnus of North Bergen High School (her family moved there during her freshman year from JC), and that town had been mobbed up for some time. I seem to remember the police commissioner about a decade ago got in trouble for getting “freebies” from the girls who worked Tonelle avenue.
In Upper Marleboro, Maryland a Shadrick Woods, 39, vice principal at Seabrook Elementary was charged with four counts of sex abuse of a 6 year old boy a Gaywood Elementary. He posted $50,000 bail and is on the lose now.
It’s just the sign of the times. 20 years ago if a teacher in Fla had sex with a kid, we’d never hear about it in Cal. Now, it’s on three TV shows and all over the net before you go to bed. So now we hear about these stories a couple of times a month, when before we’d only hear about an incident in our own town.
Soon that's what the press probably will be calling them... lol. Then they'll show slow-motion video footage of them backed with music from The Godfather. ;-)
Just driving down that road on the way to somewhere else makes me feel like a dirtbag.
Very true. My mother spent her teen years in a little house on the side of the hill overlooking Tonelle aka The Boulevard of Broken Dreams and Lonely Truckers. At the time, there was a slaughterhouse right on Tonelle where the Luccheses used to get rid of their “dead weight.”
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