Federal authorities allege that a company in New Jersey lied when it said it completed a $10.2 million project to replace lead pipes in Newark, a criminal complaint detailed Wednesday.
The project, the Lead Service Line Replacement Program, was supposed to replace all of the city’s lead water pipes after dangerously elevated lead levels were found in city water. The company, JAS Group Enterprise, is alleged to have sent photos of copper pipes saying it had replaced them.
But those pipes were allegedly already in place before the project. The company sent the photos between 2020 and 2022, during the project. U.S. Attorney Philip Sellinger alleged that a company foreperson, Latronia Sanders, “instructed the crew not to replace the lead” even when told there was lead in the water line.
Sanders and company CEO Michael Sawyer were indicted on Thursday for conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
“As our complaint alleges, Michael Sawyer and Latronia Sanders worked for a company hired by the city of Newark to replace lead pipes, but instead, they intentionally left lead pipes in the ground,” Sellinger said in a statement. “By causing misleading photographs and verification forms to be submitted, Sawyer and Sanders concealed that they intentionally did not replace lead pipes and defrauded Newark by collecting payment for work they did not properly perform. Today, we begin the process of holding them accountable.”
Investigators accused Sanders of sending text messages intended to make inspectors believe that work the company performed was not necessary because copper pipes were already present at the site.
When copper pipes were present at a site, crews were instructed to polish them to make them seem new and as if they just installed them. One witness estimated that another JAS foreperson instructed the crews to do this at hundreds of sites, Sellinger said.
The mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, said the health of residents shouldn’t be in danger because JAS only affected about 1% of the pipes. City officials excavated 400 sites where they performed work, and only 28 were found to have lead pipes that needed to be replaced.
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“We’re proud of the work that we’ve done, and we’re happy that we’ve come to an end,” Baraka said. “When the U.S. attorney identified initial sites, we went to those sites. We changed what they showed us immediately that day. We continue to do that as we go. I don’t want us to have this assumption that people were at risk of being exposed to lead because that never, ever was the case.”
If convicted, Sawyer and Sanders face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 or twice the gross profits or twice the gross loss of the victims.