O’Leary Firm Named In Ritacco Indictment

(Reprinted from Amboy Beacon, Nov. 3, 2010)

SOUTH AMBOY — Dynamic Claims Management Inc. (DCM), a corporation which was formed by Mayor John O’Leary, his brother, Housing Authority Executive Director Thomas O’Leary, previously-indicted insurance broker Francis Gartland of Baltimore, MD, and two others, was identified in an 18-count indictment handed-down recently by a U.S. District Court Grand Jury charging Gartland and Toms River Regional School District Superintendent of Schools Michael Ritacco with a litany of federal corruption charges.


The O’Leary brothers were not named in the indictment, and have not been charged with any wrongdoing.

Attempts to contact the Mayor for comment on three different cellphone numbers were unsuccessful.

The 25-page indictment, a copy of which has been obtained by the Amboy Beacon, details an elaborate scheme to pad insurance contracts to allegedly fund a system of kickbacks in which Ritacco is accused of taking between $1 million and $2 million in bribes from Gartland and his associate, Frank Cotroneo, between 2002 and June 2010.

Cotroneo previously pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to an unnamed “executive employee”

of the school district.

Also identified in the indictment as Gartland’s companies in addition to DCM are Alliance Benefits Strategists, E-Administrative Systems Inc., Federal Hill Risk Management LLC, Gartland & Co. Inc., Insurance Dynamics Consulting Services LLC, 1000 Washington Street LLC and Sunset Management Consultants Inc.

According to the indictment, Ritacco recommended to the Toms River Regional School District Board of Education that DCM be appointed “as an insurance consultant for the district from, on or about July 1, 2002 to, on or about June 30, 2005.

“In this regard, in or about July 2002, defendant Ritacco signed a contract on behalf of the district hiring DCM to manage the district’s worker’s compensation services from July 1, 2002 to June 30, 2005 for a yearly fee of $1,200,000, plus an additional yearly administration fee of $130,000, payable to DCM,” the indictment charges.

In return for this and other contracts, the indictment alleges that bribes were paid to Ritacco and his associates in the form of appliances, cash and jewelry items, including a $30,000 watch, among other things.

According to corporate papers obtained by the Beacon, the first meeting of DCM’s shareholders was held on April 24, 1996, at which “subscription agreements from John T. O’Leary, Peter Doheny, Frank Gartland, Howard Horvath and Thomas O’Leary were approved, and the issuance of stock in the corporation to them and was authorized.”

The Beacon has obtained photocopies of five stock certificates for 20 shares each which were issued for the five individuals, each of whom “was elected as Director to serve until such time as her (sic) successor is elected or appointed.”

The minutes of the first meeting of DCM’s shareholders were signed by Thomas O’Leary as Secretary.

The first meeting of DCM’s Board of Directors also was held on April 24, 1996, at which Doheny was elected as President, Thomas O’Leary was elected as Vice President, Secretary and Treasurer; and Gartland, Horvath and John O’Leary were elected as Vice Presidents.

The minutes of the first meeting of DCM’s Board of Directors were signed by Thomas O’Leary as Secretary.

In a prepared statement, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman called the alleged scheme “staggering in its magnitude and scope.

“No-matter what one’s position or title, every corrupt official has real victims,” Fishman continued. “In this case, the defendants’ alleged conduct cost the citizens of Toms River more than a million dollars.”

Ritacco reportedly received an annual salary of about $234,000 as Superintendent of the state’s fourth-largest school district, with over 2,000 employees, about 18,000 students, and an annual budget of about $195 million.

Some Toms River residents reportedly plan to file a class-action lawsuit against Ritacco, Gartland and members of that community’s Board of Education to seek return of the money taxpayers lost to bribery and fraud.

Gartland, who owns Federal Hill Risk Management, the school district’s former insurance broker, and several other companies which have represented school districts and municipalities since 1978, faces state charges for his alleged role in a conspiracy to bilk the City of Perth Amboy out of $216,495 and the Perth Amboy Public Schools out of $2,593,400.