Home improvement contractor gets 7 years for stealing from Sandy victims
A N.J. man stole over $1.4 million from more than 20 victims who hired his home improvement companies to fix their homes.
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An Ocean County, New Jersey, man has been sentenced to state prison for stealing over $1.4 million from more than 20 victims who hired his home improvement companies to fix their homes after Superstorm Sandy.
Took Sandy relief funds & left homes in disrepair
Prosecutors said that the victims paid Jeffrey Colmyer and his wife Tiffany Cimino, of Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey, and the couple’s home improvement contracting companies, to repair or rebuild their homes, primarily using Sandy relief funds. However, the couple diverted much of the money to gamble and buy luxury items, leaving homes in disrepair.
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Colmyer was sentenced to seven years in state prison by Superior Court Judge Guy P. Ryan in Ocean County. Cimino was sentenced to a term of five years of probation.
Colymer and Cimino pleaded guilty on May 29 to charges of theft by failure to make required disposition of property received.
Colmyer also entered guilty pleas on that date to second-degree money laundering on behalf of the couple’s companies, Rayne Construction Management Services, LLC (RCMS) and Colmyer & Sons, LLC.
Compounded hardships & distress
Prosecutors previously obtained a consent order in a lawsuit against the couple and their companies under which the defendants must pay $695,402 in restitution to victims and $655,243 to the State of New Jersey as restitution for stolen Sandy relief funds.
In sentencing the defendants, Judge Ryan ordered additional sums of restitution to the victims, bringing total restitution to more than $1.4 million. Colmyer also must pay $56,472 to the State of New Jersey for back taxes he failed to pay, and Cimino must pay $56,332 in back taxes.
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“Colmyer and Cimino callously stole from Sandy victims whose homes were destroyed, compounding the hardships and distress their victims faced as they strived to rebuild after this historic storm,” New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal said in a statement. “By absconding with disaster relief funds and personal savings that these victims desperately needed, these defendants proved themselves to be heartless con artists.”
Abandoned jobs or failed to start jobs
The couple was arrested on October 11, 2016. Prosecutors said that Colmyer and Cimino diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars their victims paid to have their homes repaired, elevated, and rebuilt. The couple used the funds to pay personal expenses, including jewelry purchases by Cimino, a $17,000 diamond ring, and hundreds of thousands of dollars that Colmyer gambled at seven casinos in Atlantic City. Meanwhile, they abandoned jobs, or in many cases failed to even start jobs, leaving many victims with uninhabitable homes.
Most of the funds that were stolen came from the Reconstruction, Rehabilitation, Elevation and Mitigation (RREM) Program, a Sandy relief program administered by the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs and funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The RREM Program was the state’s largest Sandy housing recovery program and provided grants to impacted homeowners to cover rebuilding costs up to $150,000 that were not covered by insurance, other federal relief funds, or other sources.
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Steven A. Meyerowitz, Esq., (smeyerowitz@meyerowitzcommunications.com) is the director of FC&S Legal, the editor-in-chief of the Insurance Coverage Law Report, and the founder and president of Meyerowitz Communications Inc. This story is reprinted with permission from FC&S Legal, the industry’s only comprehensive digital resource designed for insurance coverage law.