Brick Superintendent, Three Others Indicted In Day Care Scheme

Almost five months after he was first arrested, Walter Uszenski, the Brick Township superintendent of schools, was indicted Tuesday by an Ocean County grand jury on charges of official misconduct and theft.

Ocean County Prosecutor Joseph Coronato announced the indictments of Uszenski; former Brick Schools Interim Director of Public Services Andrew Morgan; Morgan’s wife, former Brick Schools Academic Officer Lorraine Morgan; and Jacqueline Halsey, 37, of Brick, the daughter of Walter Uszenski late Tuesday.

The four were indicted on charges of official misconduct and theft by deception, Coronato said.

Uszenski, Andrew Morgan and Halsey all were arrested May 7 in what Coronato’s office said was a scheme to provide Halsey’s son “educational and other services at public expense to which the child was not legally entitled.”

Lorraine Morgan, 58, of Edison, was not arrested in May and was still employed by the Brick Township School District until her contract ended June 30. She was not offered an extension at the time by interim Superintendent Richard Caldes.

Andrew Morgan, 68, of Edison also was indicted on charges of false swearing and theft by deception for knowingly concealing his prior criminal conviction for sale of a controlled dangerous substance in New York City in 1990, said Al Della Fave, spokesman for the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office. Morgan falsely certified in his employment application for the interim director of special services position that he had never been arrested, charged or convicted of a criminal offense. Morgan resigned from his position on Dec. 31, 2013. He received in excess of $60,000 in compensation from the Brick Board of Education between March 1 and Dec. 31, 2013, Della Fave said.

The indictment alleges that Uszenski, 63, and Andrew Morgan, who became the interim director of special services for the Brick school district upon Uszenski’s recommendation in July 2013, engineered a plan to provide the preschool aged son of Halsey, 37, with full-time day care and transportation at the school district’s expense. They did so by falsely claiming that the program and services were educationally appropriate and necessary, Della Fave said.

The investigation revealed that Halsey, a Brick resident, initiated and approved the improper request and that both Morgan and Uszenski executed the necessary approvals required for the Brick Board of Education to fund the program and related services, he said. The amount of fraudulent benefits conferred is believed to exceed $50,000, Della Fave said.

Andrew Morgan initially was hired by the Brick Board of Education, at the request and recommendation of Uszenski, to conduct an audit of the Brick schools’ special services section in March 2013, Della Fave said. Uszenski and Morgan knew each other and had worked together before 2013. The $17,499 audit, which is seven pages long, was critical of the job performance of the then-director of special services. Morgan was paid more than $83 per hour for 209 hours to prepare and write the audit, Della Fave said.

The audit also advocated saving the district money by providing services to special needs students in-district rather than sending those students out of district and paying private tuition, Della Fave said. As a result of the “audit,” Uszenski recommended Morgan to the Board of Education to become the “interim Director of Special Services,” and the board approved the hire.

“It is alleged that the ’audit’ was a pretense to position Morgan as the director of the special services section,” Della Fave said.

Morgan began serving on July 1, 2013. One of his first official acts was to engineer a fraudulent special education plan for Halsey’s son, who also is Uszenski’s grandchild, to receive unnecessary services and transportation at taxpayer expense, Della Fave said.

Uszenski, Morgan and Halsey have been charged with the second-degree crime of official misconduct and third-degree theft by deception, as well as an additional charge of third-degree official misconduct, he said.

Lorraine Morgan, Andrew Morgan’s wife, was charged by the grand jury with official misconduct, a third-degree offense, for her role in approving unnecessary counseling services for the former superintendent’s grandson, Della Fave said.

Each second-degree official misconduct charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison with a minimum mandatory period of 5 years without parole. Third-degree official misconduct carries a maximum penalty of 5 years in New Jersey state prison with a minimum mandatory period of 2 years which must be served before parole eligibility. Each third-degree theft by deception charge carries a maximum period of 5 years incarceration in New Jersey state prison, Della Fave said.