A n official with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in New Jersey was arrested July 23 for allegedly using a straw company to get FHWA grant funds he also oversaw as a public official and for allegedly falsifying related federal disclosure documents, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Paul J. Fishman said.
Lawrence F. Cullari Jr., 42, of Tinton Falls, assistant division administrator of the FHWA’s New Jersey Division, was arrested at his office in West Trenton by special agents from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Office of Inspector General (OIG) and criminal investigators from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
He is charged in a criminal complaint with five counts of making false statements and one count of wire fraud.
Cullari had an initial appearance and bail hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge James B. Clark III and was released on $100,000 bond.
According to the criminal complaint filed in Newark federal court, Cullari has been the assistant division administrator for the FHWA New Jersey Division since 2010. In that position, he has the power to influence the allocation of DOT funding. Since 2006, he has also operated a private consulting and engineering company called Dencore Consulting, which was owned by his former wife.
According to the complaint, in about 2006, the defendant approached his former father-inlaw and asked to use his company — identified as Company 1 — as a nominal or “straw” contractor to get work for Dencore Consulting from Rutgers University’s Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation (Rutgers CAIT) and New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).
According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, from May 2006 until at least June 2013, Cullari prepared bids and work proposals for his former father-in-law to sign and submit to Rutgers CAIT and NJIT on behalf of Company 1, predominantly for FHWA-funded projects.
When Rutgers CAIT or NJIT awarded projects to the company, Cullari arranged for the relevant engineering reports to be completed. He allegedly had his former father-in-law sign and mail the reports to the universities on behalf of Company 1, as if the company had performed the work, the press release states.
The father-in-law then mailed invoices on behalf of the company to the schools for payment, according to the U.S. Attorney, and when the universities paid, the father-in-law kept a small portion of the payment, usually about $300, for himself and wrote a check to Dencore Consulting for the balance.
In addition, Cullari allegedly filed false Confidential Financial Disclosure Reports from 2009 through 2013, indicating on the forms that he held no outside positions and earned no outside income. However, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Dencore Consulting was paid more than $130,000 relating to a number of contracts with Company 1 during those years, and more than $56,000 of that income was transferred directly from Dencore Consulting’s bank account into his personal bank account.
Cullari was also a member of several advisory boards at Rutgers CAIT, the press release states.
The maximum potential penalty for the wire fraud charge is 20 years in prison, and the maximum potential penalty for each false statements charge is five years in prison. The charges also each carry a maximum potential penalty of $250,000, or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense.