Monmouth County Man Pleads Guilty In Mail Fraud Case

A Monmouth County man, who is a former supervisor for a federal agency, admitted Tuesday to using a Middletown-based straw company to fraudulently obtain grant funds, authorities said.

Lawrence F. Cullari Jr., 43, of Tinton Falls, pleaded guilty in federal court before U.S. District Judge Peter G. Sheridan, sitting in Trenton, to one count of mail fraud.

Cullari was the assistant division administrator of the New Jersey Division of the Federal Highway Administration from 2010 to July 2013, according to a news release from Paul J. Fishman, the U.S. Attorney in Newark.

According to documents filed in the case and statements made in court:

Through his job, Cullari was able to influence the allocation of federal Department of Transportation funding.

He also operated Dencore Consulting, a private consulting and engineering company owned by his ex-wife.

His former father-in-law owned and operated another engineering company that was based in Middletown and handled mechanical, plumbing and electrical designs for residential and commercial projects.

Cullari admitted that in 2006, he and his father-in-law agreed to use that Middletown-based company as a straw contractor to get federally-funded work for Dencore from Rutgers University’s Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation (Rutgers CAIT) on the Busch campus in Piscataway, and from the N.J. Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark.

Between May 2006 and June 2013, Cullari prepared bids and work proposals for that Middletown-based company to sign and submit to Rutgers and NJIT.

When those schools awarded projects to that company, he then arranged for reports and invoices that fraudulently stated that the company had completed the work.

After the schools paid the company, its owner kept a small portion of the payment, then wrote a check to Dencore Consulting for the remaining balance.

Cullari faces up to 20 years in prison at sentencing, which is scheduled for June 22.

Special Agents from the Department of Transportation, Office of the Inspector General, handled the investigation.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Scott B. McBride, the deputy chief of the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Economic Crimes Unit, handled the case for the government.