Ex-Ridgewood inspector apologizes for stealing $460,000 in quarters

CHRIS HARRIS

northjersey.com

HACKENSACK — As a prosecutor detailed the events that led him to this moment, parking meter coin thief Thomas Rica sat before Superior Court Judge Patrick Roma at his sentencing Wednesday completely expressionless.

The intensely-tanned Hawthorne man stared down at the grain of the wood table before him — hands folded in his lap — as Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Daniel Keitel detailed his methodic removal of $460,000 in parking meter quarters from a storage room inside Ridgewood’s Village Hall.

Keitel pored over the facts: Rica, Ridgewood’s public works inspector for ten years, was arrested last year after admitting to investigators he’d made regular trips to the meter-collection room, which contains several buckets of loose quarters.

“Over a period of a couple of years, thousands in coins were taken per trip,” Keitel said, prefacing his comments by noting Rica’s first-time offender status for the court.

After entering that room using a master building key he’d been given, Keitel said Rica would tinker with a ceiling security camera so that his coin collecting was never captured on tape.

Rica, who was making $86,000 a year with the village, would then deposit all of the coins he had taken into personal accounts he had with several different banks, Keitel said.

“It was very difficult to determine the amount of the theft,” Keitel admitted, explaining investigators using both bank records and Rica’s own admissions “established an exact amount that we think is accurate.”

Under the terms of the deal Roma accepted Wednesday, Rica —  who came to Superior Court in Hackensack dressed in a blue blazer with tan pants and a yellow tie — pleaded guilty to four counts of third-degree theft, which Keitel said  “carries a presumption” of no jail time.

State guidelines recommend prison for second-degree theft of more than $75,000.

When afforded the chance to address the court, Rica repeatedly apologized for stealing a little more than one million quarters from the village.