N.J. Man Charged Over ‘No-Show’ Hudson County Parks Job; Phone Data Put Him Elsewhere, FBI Says
An FBI complaint says Alfonso Zamarra was paid about $45,000 for a parks job he never did, citing phone data, airline records and mismatched signatures.
A Bergen County man has been charged with 28 counts of wire fraud, accused of collecting paychecks for a seasonal job at the Hudson County Parks Department that he never actually did, and then claiming unemployment benefits when the job ended.
Alfonso A. Zamarra, 58, of Rutherford, New Jersey, made his first court appearance in Newark on Oct. 21, 2026, and was released on a $100,000 bond, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey said. Each count carries up to 20 years in prison. The allegations have not been proven in court.
Three terms on the payroll
The criminal complaint, sworn by an FBI task force officer on Oct. 20, 2026, says Zamarra was hired as a parks “Seasonal Assistant” three times: from December 2019 to July 2020, from October 2021 to April 2022, and from March to September 2023. A high-ranking Parks Department official, identified only as “Individual-1” and described as a longtime associate, was listed as his reference and signed his hiring form, the complaint says.
When a county employee asked in 2021 about his attendance and work before rehiring him, Individual-1 replied, “My referral has to be good I wouldn’t have anything less,” according to the complaint.
Over about 49 pay periods, the county paid Zamarra about $45,327.45 in wages, deposited directly to his bank account, the complaint says.
How investigators say they knew he wasn’t working
The complaint lays out three kinds of evidence:
- Phone location data. His phone was rarely in Hudson County during the periods he supposedly worked, the complaint says. In four examples it lists, his phone was in Rutherford, in Bergen County, or in Worcester, Massachusetts, during hours his timesheets claimed he was working.
- Airline records. United Airlines records show he flew to Naples, Italy, on June 29, 2023, and returned on July 9, 2023, during two pay periods in which his timesheets claimed 70 hours each, according to the complaint.
- Signatures. His signature varied widely across 29 timesheets, in repeated batches, which the officer wrote suggests other people sometimes signed for him. About 16 of the 29 sheets had no supervisor signature, and the supervisor whose name appears on others told agents he or she never signed them and never supervised Zamarra.
Many of the shifts listed on his sheets, such as 3 p.m. to 10 p.m., are not shifts seasonal parks employees work, the complaint says.
Unemployment claims between terms
Seasonal workers could not work more than six months in a 12-month period, so between terms Zamarra applied for unemployment, prosecutors said. The complaint says he filed claims in 2020, 2022 and 2023 containing false information, including saying he had been “la[id] off” when his six-month term had simply ended. It puts his unemployment payments from 2020 through 2024 at about $57,021.
What happens next
The case was brought by complaint, which is a charging document used before a grand jury indictment. The FBI, the U.S. Department of Labor’s inspector general, Customs and Border Protection and the Port Authority Police Department investigated, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. The complaint does not name Individual-1 or say whether anyone else will be charged.
