Not guilty
plea entered
by employee
BY DAVE BENJAMIN
Staff Writer
FREEHOLD — Manalapan’s suspended assistant treasurer has pleaded not guilty to a count of falsifying or tampering with a public record.
Jacqueline Matus appeared before state Superior Court Judge Paul F. Chaiet on Sept. 16 for arraignment and it is expected that she will apply for the court’s pre-trial intervention program (PTI).
"I will meet with my client within 10 days," defense attorney Steve Nelson told Chaiet.
Assistant Prosecutor John Loughery said Matus was "originally charged with theft and evidence regarding that theft was presented to the Monmouth County Grand Jury. Their responsibility [is to find out] if there is probable cause to believe that she committed this crime [theft] and the grand jury decided there was not. However, in the course of the investigation there was a lot of evidence that was presented and there was evidence that she had, in fact, falsified or tampered with the record."
In her position as assistant township treasurer, Matus applied for a $250,000 public official bond. One question on the application asked the person seeking the bond, "Ever discharged from any employment?" On the application, the box marked "No" was checked.
Loughery said that answer is the basis for the falsifying records charge on which Matus was indicted. He said it is a fourth degree (lowest) crime.
"It may seem very minor," said Loughery, "but if the bonding company knows, [they would have been able to ask] why and under what circumstances and maybe that would [have an] effect [on] whether she gets bonded. It gets more significant in the context."
It is expected that Matus will return to court again on Oct. 28 for action on her request for PTI, which is a program that allows a defendant to avoid a trial and have their record cleared upon successful completion of the program’s requirements.
Matus, 40, was hired as Manalapan’s assistant treasurer on Jan. 2, 2001 at a salary of $31,200. The bond application she is accused of falsifying was completed on Jan. 17, 2001.
In July 2002, approximately $105,000 in cash and checks was discovered missing from town hall. The cash and checks had been paid to the municipal court administrator and to the township tax collector.
In August 2002, Matus was arrested and charged with "theft by failure to make required disposition of property received." She was released on $20,000 bail and suspended without pay from her job.
Matus was charged with the theft of $3,468 in court funds, of which $1,500 was cash and the balance, $1,968, was checks, authorities said at the time of her arrest.
The remainder of the missing money — $101,478 — had been paid to the tax collector’s office. Of that amount, $3,000 was cash and the remainder was checks.
On Aug. 14, 2002, a packet of checks was found in the safe room in the finance-tax collector’s office at town hall. At the time, Monmouth County Prosecutor John Kaye said it was not known if some or all of the missing checks from the court administrator’s office and the tax collector’s office were in the packet of checks that had been found behind a filing cabinet.
The indictment handed down against Matus that charges her with falsifying a public record makes no mention of the original charge of failure to make required disposition of property received.
To date, no one else has been charged in connection with the theft of funds from town hall.
Township Committee-woman Rebecca Aaronson was Manalapan’s mayor in 2002. At the time of Matus’ arrest in August 2002, Aaronson said, "Obviously, we are deeply saddened that one of our own employees has been charged with this crime, but alleged wrongdoing of one person is in no way a reflection on Manalapan’s many fine and dedicated employees."
Given the fact that Matus was not indicted on theft charges and that no one else has been charged with the crime, Aaronson was asked this week if that means there is a possibility that the person who stole the cash and checks may never be identified and may still be in town hall.
"The controls that were in place at the time of the thefts are what enabled us to discover the missing funds as quickly as we did. Since then, additional procedures have been instituted that would make a repeat occurrence more difficult, but unfortunately, any safeguards can be compromised if an individual is intent on being dishonest," she said.
Aaronson said that during the investigation of the thefts, "township employees have withstood intense scrutiny."