Middlesex Fire Inspector With Mob Ties Sentenced For Extortion

MIDDLESEX BOROUGH, NJ — A former fire inspector for Middlesex Borough and other New Jersey municipalities was sentenced Tuesday to 34 months in prison for conspiring to commit strongarm extortion, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito announced today.

Billy A. Donnerstag, 50, lives in Hackettstown but was the part-time fire subcode official/fire inspector for the town of Middlesex. For his part-time job with the town of Middlesex, Donnerstag worked six hours per week at $40 per hour. Middlesex Mayor Ron DiMura fired Donnerstag in 2017 in the days immediately after his arrest.

According to the feds, from December 2016 and through June 2017, Donnerstag and another man, Joseph P. Martinelli, 64, of Kenvil, conspired to extort the owner and operator of a real estate development and construction company.

The two used threats of physical harm if Individual 1 did not pay Donnerstag and Martinelli thousands of dollars. In a series of telephone and in-person conversations with Individual 1, Donnerstag and Martinelli told Individual 1 that, in addition to being a fire inspector for Middlesex Borough, Donnerstag also "collected debts." Donnerstag and Martinelli wanted Individual 1 to pay Martinelli, stating that Individual 1 had not paid Martinelli enough money for the sale of a property a decade earlier.

As Patch previously reported, Donnerstag told the victim to ask others about Donnerstag's father, whom Donnerstag referred to as "Jerry the Jew," because, according to Donnerstag, "that's what I do." According to publicly available information, in the 1970s, Gerald Donnerstag of Belleville, a/k/a "Jerry the Jew," reportedly was connected to organized crime, and was convicted of murder in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and theft in Essex County.

As we reported, the younger Donnerstag pleaded guilty to extortion in May of this year.

Prosecutors say Donnerstag told Individual 1:
• “If you were in front of me right now, you’d be on the floor. Okay? Cause I don’t talk—I don’t get talked to like that. You don’t know who I am.”
• “You need to iron this out with Joe. Again, if, if I have to come meet you now — again, it, it, it, it’d become, it’s gonna be a problem.”
• “What I do, is I make sure that people don’t take advantage of other people. Do you understand that? Now I also do other things, but this is one of the things that I do. Now, again if you’re not figuring wh, what my business is by now, you’re either, and again I, I say this with as much respect as I can, either an idiot, or you’re just lying because you don’t want to, to, to understand that I come from somewhere that most people don’t wanna see.”

Ultimately, over two separate meetings (both of which were lawfully recorded), Donnerstag and Martinelli obtained $15,000 in cash from Individual 1. The cash had been provided by the FBI.

In addition to the prison term, Judge Arleo sentenced Donnerstag to three years of supervised release.
Martinelli pleaded guilty before Judge Arleo on March 2, 2018, to conspiring with Donnerstag to commit extortion and is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 26, 2018.

Related: Middlesex Boro Fire Inspector Admits To Extortion

Middlesex Axes Fire Inspector After He's Charged With Extortion