Those Nickels and Dimes Add Up

JERSEY CITY (CN) -Hoboken claims that its former parking director and an outside management firm swiped $580,000 from parking meters. The city claims it hired United Textiles Fabricators to collect coins for $27,500 a year because it claimed it had experience with "a new 'smart' meter technology.

The city sued its former parking director John Corea, Toms-River based United Textiles Fabricators, and UTF president, Brian A. Petaccio, in Hudson County Court.

Hoboken claims the defendants lied about how much money they collected from city parking meters and took the coins "to pay for a variety of personal expenses unrelated to [their] meter collection activities."

The city hired United Textiles Fabricators in 2005, at $27,500 a year, to "collect parking meter revenues from the approximately 800 parking meters located throughout the city." UTF was "the only entity responsible for collecting and counting these coins" up until 2007, according to the complaint.

The city says it noticed "a shortfall in its meter revenues" in October 2007.

Shortly afterward, Hoboken says, UTF suddenly coughed up an additional $580,000 in 2 months, for "parking meter revenue previously received collected but not remitted prior thereto."

The city says UTF was unable to provide an accounting, or receipts, or a spreadsheet, as required by the agreement.

Hoboken claims that UTF "commingled Hoboken's revenue with its own" in order to defraud, and it claims Corea knew the company lied to the city about parking meter revenue and the shortfall.

Hoboken seeks damages for fraud, breach of contract, negligence, conversion and civil conspiracy. It is represented by Robert Levy with Scarinci & Hollenbeck of Lyndhurst, N.J.

Equally distributed among nickels, dimes and quarters, $580,000 would be 6,540,000 coins. Those 6.54 million coins would weigh about 204,375 lbs., or 102 tons. In case you were wondering.

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