'Shocked and disgusted;' Cranbury residents sound off after township loses $26M in wire transfer scheme

Good morning, Nick. Good morning, Simon. I think it's pretty safe to say residents are quite upset about this situation. As far as the meeting last night, there were a lot of opinions. You'll hear some in a minute. But town officials introduced two ordinances in which they plan to hire a township administrator and a chief financial officer. This is reactionary to the much bigger news that $26 million earmarked for affordable housing projects here in Cranberry. ...was stolen somehow in a wire transfer scheme. Take a look from last night. We'll break it down for you as best we can. Committee members telling residents that they, on September 28th, the township was the victim of what they're calling a sophisticated financial theft. involving that wire transfer, 26 mil. They say the money was designated for the purchase of providing affordable housing and fulfilling the town's obligation to do so here in New Jersey. But at some point, it was realized the money had actually been stolen. And since then, the Cranberry Police Department has been investigating and has since been able to freeze a little over $17 million, which the township should be able to recover. But one of the issues residents seem to be upset with is If it happened in September, why didn't they hear about it until November, and more specifically, until after Election Day? We did. We kept things quiet. We kept them quiet for a reason. If we tipped our hand too early, they could have liquidated everything. If withholding certain details helps protect this investigation and give law enforcement even the slightest opportunity to recover one more dollar of Cranberry taxpayers' money, then that is a responsibility that we must honor. To discover that millions have vanished under your watch is both shocking and entirely unacceptable. It's harsh, but the person or people involved should be terminated and the people who are responsible for oversight should resign. I'm disgusted. Many people in town are disgusted. I think it's pretty safe to say the residents in Jersey were pissed off. They're shocked in that not only was the money lost, but they're shocked in that they didn't get the info until well after the fact. Now, you heard the chief, and the chief in a written statement is taking full responsibility, saying that was his call because he did not want to jeopardize the investigation. Now, who took the money? Who has what's left of the money? That's unknown. That information is not coming out right now as this investigation continues and they're still trying to recover as much of the funds as they can. So we'll wait for additional details on this one. As we get them, we'll pass them along. That's the latest from Cranberry. Tony Caputo, News 12, New Jersey.