Milton Milan, former mayor of Camden, was sentenced in June to more than seven years in prison for taking mob payoffs, stealing money from a campaign fund and even swindling an intern. I don't claim that my reporting - and that of three other reporters at our paper - was responsible for bringing the once-arrogant Milan to justice. But the sentence was vindication for the 150 or so stories our newspaper wrote over almost two years about corruption in his administration and others connected to him.
The mayor once issued a public statement comparing our reporting to "Nancy Drew." A database of the city's 32,000 properties proved to be a favorite resource - and, best of all, it was free. Our stories from August 1999 to his sentencing this summer were the result of knocking on doors, reading court records, scouring records and attending hearings. But computer-assisted reporting played a role in many as we combed through any relevant databases we could get our hands on.
If not, we crafted our own, spending hours plugging in numbers. Online databases such as those provided by Auto TrakXP and the New Jersey Department of Treasury, both free, were invaluable in tracking down individuals and shell companies, such as corrupt cops and construction firms linked to the mob. A few examples I'll address just three instances of how we used CAR. A database of the city's 32,000 properties proved to be a favorite resource - and, best of all, it was free.
I culled these data from the entire property database of all 21 counties in New Jersey, which we keep on hand and update yearly. This used to be a difficult database to handle because of its size and the nine-track tapes it used to be stored on. Now, it's shipped on CD-ROM. But it's still difficult to manage the 1.2-gigabyte database. We cleaned the data using Ultra Edit's search and replace function to eliminate odd characters that kept choking Access.
Once we wrote the import specs, we were able to import any county's property records into Access on demand. By importing only those counties that we need at a given time, we wouldn't exceed Access 1 gig limit. We are working to put the data on our intranet. Regardless, we were ready to ready to sort, filter and group the properties block-by-block or owner-by-owner when stories began to break. We searched for any property with the name Milan, knowing he was once a housing contractor.
But we found only one, his primary residence. We knew there had to be others. Using that database and others, we did various searches and traveled to city hall. Fellow reporter Clint Riley (now at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk,Va and I were familiar with Camden County's system of computerized property records. But we taught ourselves to become experts. Learning the way property records, mortgage and deed books are referenced in your coverage area is one of the best ways to boost the sophistication of your reporting.
It worked. During a search of those records, Clint stumbled on what would turn out to be a crumbling, two-story row home in the city still owned by Santiago & Milan Construction Co., a defunct business. The property was in arrears. A trip to city hall showed $28,000 in back taxes were owed on it. We also did some checking on Milan's former partner in the venture, Frankie Santiago. It turned out that Santiago was a four-time felon when he became vice president of Santiago & Milan.
His convictions ranged from receiving stolen goods to a drug offense. Milan was president of the company. In response to the article, the mayor denied having bilked the city, saying he had no responsibility for the properties, or the $28,000 in unpaid taxes. It was ironic. One of the mayor's key initiatives was to raze abandoned properties. Now that we had a second name, Santiago, we could search for that too.
We discovered, in our database and at city hall, that the duo owned up to six properties at varying times, including one that was considered one of the most dangerous properties in the city because of its near state of collapse. Some action Three weeks after the city placed the property on its foreclosure list because Santiago & Milan failed to pay taxes on it, the company turned around and deeded it over to an individual for $1.
Santiago was the individual. We also compiled campaign documents from his 1997 mayoral campaign. This took some time but was relatively easy as far as data work goes. We requested all campaign reports involving Milan. We checked to see what his treasurer said the campaign spent and took in. Then, we built an Excel spreadsheet with two columns, one for expenses and one for revenue, to see if the numbers added up.
They didn't come close. Subtracting the two [columns] showed that the zero balance the campaign claimed on its [election commission] report was actually a $2,440 deficit. To do this, we entered all expenses the campaign said it had written for food, "street money," entertainment and other related expenses. Street money is a payment to an individual during an election to help "get out the vote." The expenses came from detailed line items filed with the state Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) the campaign manager had to fill out.
We then entered all revenue from other PACs, transfers and donations. All this took days and had to be triple checked. But by the end, we had recreated the books from his campaign and came up with a balance sheet. Simply summing the two columns showed what the campaign spent and took in. Subtracting the two showed that the zero balance the campaign claimed on its ELEC report was actually a $2,440 deficit.
The mayor's campaign manager told ELEC he paid out $51,287 in expenses in the last few weeks of the campaign. Actually, checks that were written for payments totaled $58,755. Other problems The campaign also failed to list names and numbers for many of those receiving street money, including those who lived at a homeless shelter that accounted for some 200 checks. In fact, more than 200 other checks were never recorded at all.
Overall, we found at least $10,000 in unaccounted funds and several violations of state election laws. The former campaign manager never gave a clear explanation of the discrep~ ancies, other than sloppy bookkeeping. Milan was never charged with crimes related to those discrepancies, but jurors did find him guilty of instructing the treasurer to take $7,500 from a fund and use it to pay for the mayor's personal vacation to Puerto Rico with friends and family.
Again, we felt vindicated. We knew something wasn't right with the mayor's campaign books and were able to prove it. We also created a database of possible shell companies that mobsters or their associates were using, or suspected of using, to get city contracts. We got our information from sources then checked the companies with the state Treasury Department's online subscription site of Corpo- rate and Business Information Reporting.
By downloading the standard information, we were able to assemble a standard form that included each company's name, it's identification number for tracking purposes, principals involved, agents, addresses, phone numbers, dates of incorporation, annual report filings and any pseudonyms the companies used. We used the information to spot patterns, see family connections, and track down officers, whose names were unknown to the public.
We had solid hits with several companies, including Transaero Inc., an electrical contracting company. Transaero had connections with a mob associate, Daniel Daidone, who, it turned, out, opened a branch office in the mayor's former campaign headquarters. Staff writer Mike Franolich uncovered a trove of documents linking the mayor to Transaero. A source confirmed for me that Transaero was a mob front and that the goal was to install a minority as the company's head.
Then, Transaero would be able to get city contracts through its friend, the mayor. One of the charges a jury convicted the mayor on was taking cash bribes from the Philadephia/South Jersey mob boss, Ralph Natale. More than a year after we wrote our Transaero story, Natale, a confessed killer, admitted on the witness stand that it was his key company and Daidone was his intermediary. They never did land contracts, but Milan was finally exposed.
As of July, Milan's attorney was working to appeal the conviction. Frank Kummer can be reached by e-mail at fkummer@courierpostonline.com