A contractor hired to replace lead pipes throughout Newark faked the work, put residents’ lives at risk and charged the city $10 million for the job, federal investigators said Thursday.
JAS Group Enterprise was one of several contractors hired by Newark to replace lead pipes throughout the city. The program was hailed by many as a positive example of how quickly and effectively the dangerous pipes can be removed from a heavily populated city.
But in cases where JAS Group was charged with replacing the pipes, the company simply didn’t do it, the Justice Department said in a criminal complaint.
Instead, employees used misleading photos to claim they’d done the work, then billed the city as if it was complete, according to the feds.
“The subjects in this investigation knew they were not replacing the lead pipes, and then passed off misleading photos to conceal the ones they left in the ground,” Newark FBI agent Nelson I. Delgado said in a press release.
Additionally, when the company found copper pipes in the ground, it cleaned them up and claimed to have completed the replacement work, the feds said.
Earlier this year, authorities in Newark revealed that some of the supposedly replaced lead pipes were still in the ground, and workers went around the city replacing them. However, local leaders would not say exactly what was happening.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said Thursday that the information was kept private because of the ongoing federal investigation. He claimed JAS Group only affected 1% of the entire project.
JAS CEO Michael Sawyer, 57, and company foreperson Latronia Sanders, 55, were charged Thursday with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Sawyer and Sanders ordered their employees to fake the work, according to the feds. The other employees involved were not named.
Lead contamination in Newark’s drinking water was first discovered in 2016. By 2021, the lead pipe replacement program was completed — aside from JAS Group’s alleged fraud — after the city took several steps to streamline the process.
