A North Jersey man convicted of participating in a scheme to fraudulently get state funds for a railroad repair project has been sentenced to six years in state prison.
Ernest J. Dubose of Jersey City was sentenced in Superior Court after being found guilty in April of second-degree conspiracy charges, Acting Attorney General John Hoffman said Friday.
In 2010, Dubose and former New Jersey Department of Transportation engineer Gaudner Metellus worked together to inflate the cost of a project to rehab the Eagle Rock Railroad Bridge in Roseland from about $700,000 to $1.4 million, according to the attorney general. Metellus pleaded guilty in January, and faces sentencing in July.
Authorities say Dubose and Metellus, of Jamison, Pennsylvania, solicited representatives of Morristown and Erie Railway for $325,000 in bribes from the company as their share of the extra state grant funds that were to be spent on the project. Authorities say the company tipped the government off to the scheme and cooperated in the investigation.
In 2010, an official with the railroad secretly recorded a meeting between the company president, another employee and Metellus in Morristown where he described the fraud.
Metellus proposed the company submit false invoices for work that would never be performed and agreed that he would split the state grant funds with them, authorities say.
According to the attorney general's office, Metellus and Dubose met later in 2010 with railroad officials in Morristown and received two checks payable to Dubose for $10,000 and $315,000. Dubose and Metellus told the company to list Dubose as a consultant, though he was not qualified as one, authorities say.
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Dubose allegedly acted as the middle man to accept the bribes, disburse them between himself and Metellus, and insulate Metellus from detection.
