The FBI is investigating after signs displaying the name 'JoJo' and a rat were found at three locations connected to Joseph 'JoJo' Giorgianni yesterday morning.
TRENTON — The FBI is investigating after signs displaying the name “JoJo” and a rat were found at three locations connected to Joseph “JoJo” Giorgianni yesterday morning, six days after he took a plea deal and implicated Mayor Tony Mack in a corruption scheme, Giorgianni’s attorney Jerome Ballarotto said.
The apparently professionally made signs were discovered on the front lawn of Giorgianni’s Ewing home, atop a building draped with a banner of Mack two doors down from JoJo’s Steak House in North Trenton, and in front of Ballarotto’s Hamilton office.
They’re simple signs, but they carry an inflammatory, criminal message, said Ballarotto.
“It’s more than crazy, it’s a serious crime,” an angry Ballarotto said last night. “And Hamilton Township police doesn’t think it’s funny, and neither does the FBI.”
“It’s a threat,” Ballarotto added. “It’s clearly taken as a serious threat.”
Last Friday, Giorgianni took a plea deal that will avoid a trial for him on corruption charges alongside Mack and Mack’s brother Ralphiel in January. The three men were arrested in September 2012 and indicted in December 2012 after allegedly extorting bribes in exchange for Mack’s official help with a parking garage supposedly to be built downtown. The developer and his representative were actually FBI informers and the project was a sting operation.
As part of his plea deal, Giorgianni said under oath that he gave Mack $8,000 in cash bribe money inside JoJo’s Steak House last year. Giorgianni also said he conspired with the Mack brothers and former city employee Charles Hall III to take money in exchange for helping set up a deal for the garage.
“And some moron, some idiot, decided he was ratting somebody out, and they made this sign,” Ballarotto said.
At no point in the hearing last Friday or since did Giorgianni or Ballarotto say Giorgianni will testify for the government, Ballarotto said. Yet the sign makers have made that assumption, he said.
“And what they are trying to do is obstruct justice,” Ballarotto said. “They’re threatening him and they are trying to influence what they think he might say.”
“Everyone’s concerned about it, and everyone’s taking it very seriously,” he added.
An FBI spokeswoman did not return a request for comment yesterday. But Ballarotto said both the FBI and police in the three towns where the signs were set up are stepping up security for Giorgianni. The signs along with security camera footage from the area around Ballarotto’s office have all been impounded by the FBI, which will conduct a “full forensic investigation,” Ballarotto said.
Ballarotto discovered the sign on the front lawn of his White Horse Avenue office while arriving for work yesterday morning. He immediately called Giorgianni.
“I called Joe to see if he’s OK,” Ballarotto said. “He was my first concern.”
Then, Ballarotto said, he called out township police and the FBI.
Soon after, the two other identical signs were found in Ewing and Trenton. The sign posted on top of the building with the Mack banner on the 1200 block of Martin Luther King Boulevard is near JoJo’s Steak House but is not owned by Giorgianni.
“He’s not happy about it,” Ballarotto said of Giorgianni. “Nobody’s happy about it.”
Ballarotto said he is not accusing the Mack brothers or any people affiliated with them of creating the sign.
“Whoever did it, we’re going to find out who did it, and I anticipate they’re going to be prosecuted,” Ballarotto said.
“It’s not a joke,” he said. “It’s not funny.”
Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5705.
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