After multiple delays, Erik Lowe’s sentencing scheduled for Jan. 13, 2020 | Paterson Times Paterson Times

After multiple delays, Erik Lowe’s sentencing scheduled for Jan. 13, 2020

By Jayed Rahman
Published: November 7, 2019

erik-lowe

Former Paterson Municipal Utilities chairman Erik Lowe’s sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 13, 2020.

Lowe was originally scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 11, 2018. However, his sentencing has hitherto been postponed eight times.

Judge Kevin McNulty will sentence Lowe at 11 a.m. on Jan. 13, 2020 at the Newark federal courthouse.

Lowe pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit extortion and extortion under color of official right last May. He was involved in a $288,200 kickback scheme with a pair of contractors, according to federal authorities.

The kickback schemes involved $288,200.

In the first scheme Lowe issued $146,500 in sham payments, via check following the agency’s dissolution, to Carnell Baskerville, 51, a self-employed contractor, between Dec. 2014 and May 2015.

Baskerville is the owner of Carnell’s General Contracting of Linden. Both agreed to a kickback scheme, where Lowe would write checks for service rendered that was never performed to Baskerville’s company, those checks would then be divided up between both parties.

Baskerville pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 21 months in prison.

In the second scheme, Lowe was involved with a second contractor, whose company installed and repaired fences for residential and commercial businesses, from Aug. 2012 through Nov. 2014.

Lowe admitted he inflated checks paid to the second contractor above the value of job performed so the contractor could kickback “thousands of dollars” to him. Near the end of the scheme, Lowe was issuing checks for thousands of dollars knowing that no job had been performed by the contractor.

Lowe issued $141,700 in checks to the second contractor and accepted “tens of thousands” in kickbacks, said authorities.

Lowe’s wasn’t the only beneficiary of the kickback scheme. Authorities said another “fellow MUA commissioner” received cash for helping to carry out the scheme. However, that co-conspirator’s name has not been released by authorities.

Lowe faces 20 years in prison and $250,000 in penalties for each of the two counts.

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