(Source: OAG NJ) TRENTON – Acting Attorney General Robert Lougy announced that seven additional individuals were charged criminally today with filing fraudulent applications for federal relief funds related to Superstorm Sandy.  Since March 2014, the Attorney General’s Office has filed criminal charges against 57 people for allegedly engaging in this type of fraud, including the seven individuals charged today.

The Attorney General’s Office is continuing its aggressive efforts to investigate fraud in Sandy relief programs, working jointly with the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs (DCA) and the Offices of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

The individuals who have been charged are alleged, in most cases, to have filed fraudulent applications for relief funds offered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).  In many cases, they also applied for funds from a Sandy relief program funded by HUD, low-interest disaster loans from the SBA, or assistance provided by the New Jersey Department of Human Services. The HUD funds are administered in New Jersey by the Department of Community Affairs.

“Under each of these disaster relief programs, it was made absolutely clear that only those whose primary residences were damaged qualified for aid, but these defendants selfishly lied about their situation to divert funding intended for those left homeless when Sandy struck,” said Acting Attorney General Lougy. “It’s a sad truth ...