A retired top cop helped Robert Menendez’s future wife leave the scene of her fatal car accident without a field sobriety test or handing over her phone.
The Post has learned that Michael Mordaga, former Hackensack police chief and former chief of detectives for the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, was on the scene within minutes when Nadine Arslanian crashed her black Mercedes into Richard Koop in Bogotá, New Jersey, in December 2018.
Mordaga, 66, helped her leave the wrecked car and get her belongings out after questioning the patrol officer who attended the accident about what he planned to do.
The dash cam footage and 911 recordings do not show Arslanian asking about the victim, but they do show her refusing to have her cell phone searched and also suggest that she did not call 911 until officers were already on the scene, then they were told the wrong location of the accident. .
The Bogotá Police Department released footage of the interrogation of Senator Bob Menéndez’s now-wife after she fatally hit a pedestrian on December 12, 2018. The Bogotá Police Department’s dash cam showed Arslanian shaking in his coat in leather and a short dress while being interrogated by a man from Bogotá. , New Jersey, patrolman on the death of Richard Koop. Bogotá Police Department
A witness claimed she told police she was going to call someone for help.
At the time, Arslanian was dating Menendez, whom she married in 2020, and her longtime boyfriend, Douglas Anton, a lawyer who later represented R. Kelly in his sex trafficking trial.
The fatal collision on December 12, 2018 led to part of the extensive bribery and corruption charges brought against her and Menendez, which both deny.
What we know about the Bob Menéndez accusation
New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez faces federal corruption charges related to an alleged multi-year scheme.
Menendez allegedly accepted bribes, including gold bars, in exchange for helping three businessmen, Wael Hana, José Uribe and Fred Daibes, and the country of Egypt, according to officials.
Menendez and his wife, Nadine, were accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of bribes, according to a Manhattan federal indictment.
When the feds raided Menendez’s Englewood Cliffs home in June 2022, they found a 2019 Mercedes C-Class, at least 13 gold bars and $566,000 in cash “stuffed in envelopes.” Another $70,000 in cash was found in Nadine’s safe deposit box.
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and his wife, Nadine Menendez, were indicted on federal corruption charges.AP
The feds say Menendez also received mortgage payments and paid for a low- or no-support job and home furnishings.
This is not the first time the 69-year-old Democrat has faced federal corruption charges. In 2015, Menendez was accused of accepting gifts from Florida eye surgeon Salomon Melgen.
The “gifts” included a vacation to Paris, flights on a private jet, and a vacation to Melgen’s villa in the Dominican Republic.
A month after the accident, Arslanian texted Wael Hana, an Egyptian-American businessman also charged in the bribery scheme, about the loss of his car, and then provided him with a 2019 Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible. , valued at $60,000, prosecutors allege. .
However, Arslanian’s role in the death of Koop, 49, only emerged Wednesday, in dash cam footage and other records released by the Bogotá Police Department to NorthJersey.com.
Nadine Arslanian’s black Mercedes was totaled after she hit and killed a pedestrian in 2018. Rosemarie Arnold Law Offices Dashcam footage showed Arslanian refusing to allow police to search her phone. She was never given a field sobriety test. Bogotá Police Department
Menendez’s future wife told police she did not see Koop, 49.
But she was driving her car fast enough that the collision threw Koop’s body onto the sidewalk just steps from her own home on East Main Street in Bogotá, and then she crashed into a parked car.
Sheri Breen, an attorney for Koop’s estate, told NorthJersey.com that other footage from a business had shown that Arslanian “moved her car around his body as he lay in the road and she did not come to his aid even to check on him.” was”. him.”
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Records also suggest that Arslanian was not the first person to call 911 after the crash, at 7:35 p.m., because the dispatcher told him an officer was already on the scene.
He told the dispatcher that he was in “Teaneck,” which borders Bogotá.
Koop was run over in front of 155 E. Main St. in Bogotá. That address is next door, just west, 311 DeGraw Ave. in Teaneck.
Arslanian, shivering in a fur coat and short dress as she stood on the road, initially agreed to let police search her phone, but later said she wanted a lawyer because “I don’t want to say anything bad.”
Richard Koop, the victim, left behind a son, now 16, and an adult daughter. Facebook This is where Koop died after being hit by Arslanian’s Mercedes. When he called 911, an officer was already on the scene. google maps
“Why was the guy standing in the middle of the street?” she asked. “I did not do anything wrong”.
He then told the trooper: “He jumped on my windshield.” The footage of her does not show her asking about the victim’s fate, but she is heard asking for something that, according to an officer, had gone “in the ambulance.”
Minutes later, the dash cam shows someone off-camera being asked, “You’re retired, you said?” That person, identified by The Post as Mordaga, said “Yes” and that he was retired from “Hackensack.”
In the images you could hear his voice saying: “I don’t even know her. That’s my friend’s wife who is friends with her. She said to me, could you do me a favor and take her there because her friend just got into a car accident?
This was the Mercedes that prosecutors say Arslanian received from his co-defendant, Wael Hana, after the accident. U.S. Attorney Arslanian and Menendez, who are now married, were dating at the time of the accident.
The “friend’s wife” appears to be an anonymous friend who helped Arslanian get his belongings out of the car.
Mordaga is also heard in the footage asking: “Are you receiving a statement that you are going to give to the prosecutor’s office?”
The patrolman told him: “I don’t believe it, until now. She is good at taking her things from her car.”
Mordaga was also given details of the investigation and was told the victim was “walking down the middle of the street, that’s what we’re gathering.”
Arslanian and Menendez were accused of accepting bribes, including gold bars and hundreds of thousands in cash, in a federal indictment that charged them with bribery last month. AP More than $480,000 in cash was discovered in Menendez’s home, much of it stuffed in envelopes and hidden. in clothes, closets and safes. US District Court
“I think it’s good to release her as soon as she gets her things out of her car,” the Bogotá police officer said in the video. Arslanian left without a summons.
But Sergio Uribe, owner of the parked car Arslanian hit, told the New York Times that he heard her tell police she was going to call someone.
“I remember saying, ‘Is that woman allowed to leave? Aren’t they going to arrest her or anything like that?’” he told the Times.
Arslanian’s attorney declined to comment to The Post.
Both Arslanian, 56, and Menendez, 69, were indicted in Manhattan federal court last month along with three other people in a brazen bribery scheme.
Prosecutors said the couple had accumulated gold bars and nearly $500,000 in cash in their home, as well as a new Mercedes convertible.
A man who identified himself as Mordaga declined to comment Thursday after The Post contacted him by phone and directed all questions to Bogotá police, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A lawyer representing Mordaga did not respond to a request for comment.
The former top cop has been accused of snitching on Frank Lagano, an alleged member of the Lucchese crime family, leading to his execution in the parking lot of an East Brunswick restaurant he co-owned in 2007.
Mordaga was accused by the family of reputed gangster Frank Lagano of revealing his whereabouts, resulting in his murder in a New Jersey parking lot in 2007, according to a federal claim by Lagano’s estate. Jeff Day Former Hackensack Police Chief Michael Mordaga was called to the fatal December 2018 crash to help Sen. Menendez’s then-girlfriend Nadine Arslanian, according to sources.Bergen Record-USA TODAY NETWORK
The dead man’s family lost their federal lawsuit against Mordaga, who denied wrongdoing, and the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office earlier this year, but the family appealed.
He also faced allegations in another federal complaint that he failed to intervene in a domestic violence incident involving two married police officers, Sara Malvasia and Niles Malvasia, of the Hackensack Police Department in 2015, when he was still in charge of the force.
It was alleged that instead of arresting or disciplining the husband, she said, “Girly things always happen. “That’s why women can’t be police officers.”
The 2017 federal lawsuit was later settled and the couple won $1 million in a Powerball lottery in 2018.
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