FBI Probes N.J. Broker’s Business Dealings

Dec. 14--Federal investigators are looking into the business dealings of Bergen County insurance broker Joseph Bigica, a prominent campaign contributor who has won lucrative brokerage contracts in several North Jersey towns as well as at the state's biggest sewage treatment agency.

Two Jersey City councilmen confirmed Tuesday that they were recently approached by FBI agents seeking information about Bigica.

"They called me and said they wanted to meet about this guy," said Jersey City Council President Peter Brennan. "I don't really know the guy. I might see him once a year. All I know is he makes a lot of campaign contributions."

Both Brennan and Councilman William Gaughan, who also confirmed that he was questioned about Bigica, declined to provide any details about the interviews.

But sources with knowledge of the federal inquiry said investigators are gathering information about major contracts Bigica has landed with several public agencies. They said investigators are also tracking Bigica's relationship with elected officials, and accounts that he had entertained them at North Jersey strip clubs.

Employees of Satin Dolls in Lodi -- the club that doubled as Tony Soprano's "Bada Bing!" -- said government agents showed up there several months ago asking questions about Bigica and his guests.

"The feds were here asking a lot of questions, but I don't think they got much," said one Satin Dolls employee who declined to be identified. "We do know this guy. He came in a lot with friends."

Calls to Bigica and his attorney were not returned in recent days. A woman answering the door last week at his house in Franklin Lakes said Bigica was not home. She declined to comment further. Rebekah Carmichael, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman, also declined to comment.

The Record reported earlier this month that Bigica's three-year brokerage contract with the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commissioners was abruptly terminated in September.

Officials at the agency gave no reason for their action, but said they were in the process of moving the PVSC's health insurance accounts back into the state public-employee system.

Bigica, who first came to the sewerage agency in 2006, had championed the move to a private provider, Oxford Health, as a cost saver. But PVSC officials said premiums rose rapidly in the later years of Bigica's tenure as broker, pushed up in part by large commission fees he had negotiated under former PVSC Executive Director Bryan Christiansen.

Bigica's commission under his most recent PVSC three-year contract -- 2.5 percent of all premiums paid by the agency -- would have amounted to $600,000. Previous contracts brought him as much as a 5 percent commission, officials said -- an amount, they added, that gave Bigica around a half-million dollars in fees annually.

It is not clear how much Bigica has made through his brokerage work in Jersey City.

In September 2010, the Jersey City Council voted unanimously to award a three-year brokerage contract to Frenkel & Co., a New York-based firm that has a consulting arrangement with Bigica. Frenkel officials said they pay Bigica "producer" fees for originating the contract, but said they could not immediately specify how much he was being paid.

The Jersey City contract, a copy of which was reviewed by The Record, was awarded "as an extraordinary, unspecifiable service without public bidding."

Jersey City Mayor Jeremiah T. Healy declined to be interviewed for this story. But his spokeswoman, Jennifer Morrill, confirmed that Bigica had negotiated the current contract and previous brokerage deals with the city extending back to 2007.

Morrill said she did not know why Bigica's contract was awarded without bidding or how much Frenkel and Bigica are being paid in commission and fees. Although Morrill said Jersey City had saved money through its current contract, she did not have data detailing the savings or payments made to Bigica and Frenkel.

Morrill also stressed that Bigica did not have a day-to-day role in administering coverage for the city's current and retired police, firefighters and other workers.

But that was contradicted by Frenkel & Co. President John F. Kelly, who said in an interview that Bigica "is the guy in Jersey City, day in and day out."

Kelly said Frenkel first got involved in Jersey City at Bigica's request.

"He came to us and said he needed our help with a big contract, so we are paying him a producer's fee for bringing us the business," Kelly said.

Data provided by the city show Jersey City has paid more than $123 million in health insurance and prescription drug costs in the past 30 months.

Bigica, in addition to his work for Jersey City and the PVSC, has provided brokerage services for Bayonne, Secaucus, Garfield and the Hudson Schools of Technology, according to the website for Joseph Bigica Inc.

The website also shows Bigica posing with several prominent Democratic politicians.

Since 1995, Joseph Bigica has contributed $104,700 and Laura Bigica has donated $57,450, state campaign records show. In a resume submitted by Bigica to the sewerage commission, he lists himself as a fund-raiser or finance committee member for the Hudson County Democratic Party, the Bergen County Democrats and the National Democratic Party.

Bigica's contributions to Passaic City officials, including council member and Democratic Assemblyman Gary S. Schaer, attracted attention last year when Bigica proposed to remove city workers from the state health benefit system to a private provider.

Passaic retirees protested that Schaer and other Passaic officials who had received thousands in contributions from Bigica were rushing to reward the broker with a contract that would reduce their benefits in the long run.

The council, which failed to produce a much-touted study supposedly showing that Bigica's plan would save money, eventually rejected the idea, under pressure from state overseers. Schaer did not return phone calls for this story.

E-mail: pillets@northjersey.com

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