‘Yes, I did’ — New Jersey businessman tells jury he bribed Sen. Menendez

A failed insurance broker from New Jersey told jurors in Manhattan Friday that he bribed Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife in exchange for the senator killing the prosecution of a friend and stopping an expanding criminal investigation that threatened to ensnare his own company.

The afternoon’s bombshell testimony riveted the packed courtroom, as federal prosecutor Lara Pomerantz got straight to the point after Jose Uribe, a co-defendant who pleaded guilty in March in a cooperation deal, approached the stand under the steady gaze of New Jersey’s senior senator.

“Have you ever committed a federal crime?” she asked.

“Yes, I have,” Uribe responded.

“Does that include bribery of a public official?” she asked.

“Yes, I did,” Uribe said.

Uribe then told the hushed court Menendez was that public official; his wife, Nadine, accepted the bribes; and a co-defendant, Egyptian American halal meat exporter Wael Hana, was in on it, too.

“I agreed with Nadine Menendez and other people to provide a car for Nadine in order to get the power and influence of Mr. Menendez,” Uribe said.

Uribe’s testified his goal was twofold. He wanted to stop the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office from prosecuting his friend Elvis Parra, a trucking company owner who had been indicted for insurance fraud. He also wanted to derail the expanding investigations into the company, Prestige Trucking Express, that Parra created afterward with his business partner Bienvenido Hernandez, as well as Uribe’s insurance brokerage, Phoenix Risk Management. Phoenix secured insurance for both of Parra’s firms.

Menendez whispered to his attorney throughout Uribe’s testimony. Outside after court, the Democrat told reporters in Spanish: “Wait for the cross-examination, and you’ll see what the truth is. You’re going to see — this has been prepared for weeks, for weeks.”

From insurance fraud to bribery

Uribe spent two and a half hours laying out how he came to meet the Menendezes and play a pivotal role in the senator’s second corruption trial in the past decade.

The Dominican Republic native and divorced father of four told jurors he began working in the insurance industry around 1989 after he immigrated to Union City in 1985. He started his own insurance brokerage, Inter-America Insurance, in 2001, where he specialized in securing insurance for transportation and construction companies, he testified. His family worked for him, he said.

He got charged with insurance fraud and theft by deception, lost his license, and closed the agency in 2011, he testified. He started Phoenix Risk Management soon after — illegally, because his conviction didn’t allow him to continue working in the industry, he said.

The new company had much of the same staff as the shuttered one and inherited all its clients, and Uribe’s son Omar got a license and became its agent of record, while Uribe continued as its general manager, he testified. When his son left two years later to go to law school in Seattle, Uribe promoted his daughter’s friend Ana Peguero to the firm’s agent of record, he said. Uribe and his son transferred ownership to Peguero in 2018, and Uribe told jurors they became so close he considers her a daughter.

He told jurors he met Hana around 2007 when Uribe secured insurance for a trucking company Hana owned at the time.

Their bribery scheme started in early 2018, when Hana — who shared an office with Uribe’s attorney, Andy Aslanian — overheard Uribe talking with Aslanian about Parra’s case and subpoenas Uribe’s firm had received in relation to the state’s expanding investigation. Parra faced jail time, and Uribe told jurors he was worried about him. Parra was a good friend he met after he helped Parra obtain intermodal motor transport insurance, which allowed Parra’s company to work in the port.

Hana pulled Uribe into the hallway, Uribe said, and told him “for something like $200,000, $250,000 —  I don’t remember the amount — he got a way to make these things go away.”

Hana told Uribe he could go to Nadine Menendez, and she would go to the senator, Uribe said. Uribe shared details of the conversation with Hernandez because Prestige was under investigation, too, and he figured Parra and Hernandez also could benefit from Hana’s offer, Uribe testified.

Uribe then scheduled a meeting at a Marriott hotel lounge in Teaneck for the men to talk, he said. While Hana didn’t outline how exactly the senator and his wife would end their criminal troubles, Uribe said, he, Parra, Hernandez, and Hana agreed to proceed with their scheme.

“The deal is to kill and stop all investigation,” Uribe texted Hana later, to confirm terms.

Uribe told jurors he organized a fundraiser, at Hana’s suggestion, in July 2018 in Cliffside Park to support Menendez’s reelection campaign. The event, with a suggested donation of $5,000 per person, raised $50,000, he said.

“I wanted to be in the good grace of the senator,” he said. “Things looked to be on their way.”

Failed promises

Several months later, a state detective named Suzanna Lopez reached out to Peguero and requested an interview.

Uribe’s frustration and desperation were growing, according to texts prosecutors presented earlier this week and again Friday.

“I am f***ed man,” Uribe texted Hana in October 2018. “The whole thing is going. Bad. I have no face to talk to my family … Please be sure that your friend knows about this, just as a last favor.”

In court Friday, Uribe confirmed that “your friend” in that text meant Menendez.

“All I wanted was to protect my family and this woman to leave them alone,” Uribe testified Friday, referring to the detective.

Uribe met Hana and the Menendezes for dinner, but he didn’t bring up his request for the senator’s help in the criminal cases “out of respect” for Hana, who he later concluded was “looking to kiss a** to Mr. Menendez.”

“It was pointless,” he told jurors of the dinner.

The state’s investigation proceeded, so by March 2019, Uribe decided to take matters into his own hands, he testified. He got Nadine Menendez’s number from Aslanian and reached out to her, he told jurors.

“She put a line of complaints about how her life is not going well. Most men who promised her things in the past never come through,” he testified.

Hana had promised her a car but never delivered, she told Uribe. Hana had planned to pay for the $67,000-plus Mercedes-Benz convertible Nadine wanted out of the $200,000 to $250,000 Parra and Hernandez promised to pay for Menendez’s influence, Uribe testified. It’s unclear if that money was ever paid or to whom.

Uribe saw a solution — he offered to buy Nadine Menendez the car in exchange for her help with the senator, he told jurors.

“She agreed to the terms,” Uribe testified. “I was willing to do anything in my power, and if that was to buy a car for Nadine to help me, I would get it done.”

Gurbir Grewal, New Jersey’s former attorney general, took the stand Thursday to confirm that Menendez called him twice and met with him once in 2019 to intervene in an insurance fraud case involving the trucking industry, but he told jurors he ended their conversations before the senator provided details and did not intervene. Parra eventually pleaded guilty and got probation.

As the dinner hour approached Friday, Stein dismissed the jury for the weekend. Uribe is expected to take the stand again Monday morning.

Fingerprint evidence

Earlier Friday, jurors heard from Kira Glass, a fingerprint examiner based at the FBI’s Quantico, Virginia, headquarters.

She testified that the FBI identified eight of Sen. Menendez’s prints on five cash-stuffed envelopes in the couple’s Englewood Cliffs home in June 2022, when investigators seized gold bars, gold coins, nearly $500,000 in cash, and other items they say were bribes.

Investigators also found prints belonging to Nadine Menendez on envelopes seized from her bank safe deposit box, as well as the prints of co-defendant Fred Daibes and several other men prosecutors have associated with the bribery scheme.

One envelope found in the locked bedroom closet that defense attorneys have insisted belonged to Nadine Menendez alone had the prints of both Menendez and Daibes on it, Glass said. That is significant because it dents defense arguments earlier in the trial that any evidence found in the closet had nothing to do with the senator because he had no access to that area.

On cross-examination, defense attorney Adam Fee tried to weaken that evidence by questioning Glass about another fingerprint agents identified this year on a cash-stuffed envelope. It belonged to Yanik Fenton Espinosa, a Zumba instructor in Miami who once worked for former U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican. It was unclear how her fingerprints ended up on an envelope in Menendez’s home, but under Fee’s questioning, Glass acknowledged that fingerprint examiners can’t determine how, where, when, or why prints end up on objects.