Morris County Power Player Admits He Took Cash. Now the State Wants Him Gone for Good.

By The Garden State Gazette Staff

MORRISTOWN, NJ – One of Morris County’s old Republican power names just admitted what everybody has whispered about New Jersey politics for decades: yes, the cash really does change hands.

John Cesaro, 53, a former Morris County Freeholder from Parsippany, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery after admitting he took $7,700 in cash in exchange for steering public legal work, according to New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin and the state Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA).

Here at The Garden State Gazette, we don’t put sugar in our coffee: this isn’t “bad optics.” This is a sitting county official taking envelopes and promising government business in return.

What Cesaro admitted under oath

In a plea entered November 17, 2025, before Superior Court Judge Peter J. Tober in Somerset County, Cesaro admitted:

• Between April and May 2018, while serving as a Morris County freeholder, he accepted $7,700 in cash bribes.
• The money came from a cooperating witness – a tax attorney – who wanted help getting his law firm retained for government legal work.
• Cesaro used – and agreed to use – his influence on the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders (now the Board of County Commissioners) to help steer that work.

It’s classic Jersey: county contracts, a politically connected attorney, and a local official who thought “consulting” money and public trust could live in the same pocket.

Attorney General Platkin didn’t bother dressing it up:

“The public’s faith in government is shaken when elected officials trade favors or preferential treatment for illicit payments… Government service is about serving the public, not about getting unlawful perks.”

The deal on the table: five years and political exile

Under the plea agreement, the state is asking the judge to hit Cesaro with:

• 5 years in state prison
• Forfeiture of the $7,700 he took
• A $23,000 public corruption profiteering penalty
• Permanent disqualification from holding public office or public employment in New Jersey
• A five-year ban on doing business with the state or any of its subdivisions

Sentencing is scheduled for January 16, 2026.

Translation: if the judge goes along, Cesaro loses his freedom for a stretch, his public paycheck forever, and his ability to quietly slide back in through government contracts for at least five years.

Another brick in Jersey’s corruption wall

Cesaro wasn’t some fringe back-bencher. For years he was part of the Morris County Republican machine:

• Freeholder (commissioner)
• Longtime party figure in Parsippany and county politics
• A familiar name on mailers, donor lists, and county photo ops

His guilty plea is another entry in New Jersey’s long-running corruption ledger – the kind of case that quietly confirms what cynical voters already assume about county politics:

If you’re a connected lawyer with the right friends, you don’t wait in line for contracts. You find the guy who can move the votes and you slide the envelope across the table.

Platkin’s office says OPIA will keep grinding through these cases statewide, but for Morris County, this one hits close: it’s not Trenton, not D.C., not some faceless authority – it’s a guy who sat in the chair your property tax bill reports to.

Who’s actually bringing the hammer

The prosecution is being handled inside the AG’s public-corruption machinery:

• Assistant Attorneys General Michael Grillo and Andrew Wellbrock
• Deputy Attorney General Adam Gerken
• Under the supervision of Corruption Bureau Director Jeffrey J. Manis and OPIA Executive Director Thomas Eicher

That’s bureaucratic alphabet soup, but it matters: this is not a slap-on-the-wrist ethics board case. It’s a full-state, criminal-corruption operation making an example out of a former county power broker.

GSG angle: What this says about doing business in Morris County

For residents and business owners, the lesson is simple and ugly:

• If you didn’t have cash and connections, you were playing on a different field.
• If you did, you could buy a shot at government contracts while taxpayers were told it was all about “best value” and “experience.”

Cesaro is now a cautionary tale with a DOC number attached, but the real question for Morris County is bigger than one freeholder:

• Who else knew the tax attorney was shopping contracts with bribe money?
• Did anyone inside county government flag concerns before the AG’s office stepped in?
• How many other deals followed the same quiet playbook and just never got caught?

The state’s plea deal takes Cesaro off the board. It doesn’t automatically disinfect the system that put him there.

The Garden State Gazette will remember

By mid-January, Cesaro will find out whether Judge Tober buys the full recommendation or tweaks the sentence. Either way, his political career is over on paper.

But in New Jersey, the story doesn’t end at sentencing. It ends when:

• Every contract he touched is re-examined,
• Every player in that circle is mapped out, and
• Voters stop acting surprised when yet another “rising star” turns out to have their hand in the bag.

Until then, count this case as what it is:

One more proof that in Morris County, the envelopes were real – and this time, one of the guys who took them finally said it out loud in court.