NFI CEO Sidney Brown, a member of the family that has owned the truckload carrier for more than 90 years, was indicted this week as part of a broad investigation of a major New Jersey power broker.
While NFI is not a target of the investigation, the indictment says the truckload carrier received more than $7 million in financial benefits as a result of receiving tax credits for moving its headquarters into the Triad1828 Centre on Cooper Street in Camden, New Jersey, which prosecutors say became possible only through the hardball tactics of South Jersey’s George Norcross and his brother Philip.
NFI also has further tax credits to claim. There are no legal issues with the credits.
Norcross has long been described as a Democratic power broker though he held no public office and never has.
On NFI’s website, the company says it is the country’s sixth-largest dedicated carrier and the fourth-largest warehouse provider, and that it has more than 16,000 employees.
A spokesman for the company declined comment.
The “Enterprise”
The indictment portrays Brown as a member of what prosecutors call “the Norcross Enterprise” without being one of its leaders or directly engaging in what the indictment portrays as the often threatening steps some members of the enterprise took that allegedly constitute criminal extortion.
Brown has direct ties to George Norcross through Cooper Health, a South Jersey health system where Norcross is chairman of the Board of Trustees and Brown is a member of the board. Brown also is described in the indictment as a member of the group that ultimately bought not only the Triad1828 Centre but also the Ferry Terminal building and 11 Cooper in Camden.
Triad1828 is described in the indictment as the tallest building on the Camden waterfront. It was constructed between January 2017 and December 2019.
The 111-page indictment mostly focuses on the interaction between the group led by the Norcross brothers, George in particular, and various state and local officials in redevelopment efforts along the Camden waterfront. The city, directly across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, was once a major manufacturing site that over the years saw such manufacturers as Campbell Soup (NYSE: CPB) and RCA Victor depart for other locations as it sank into poverty and population decline.
The six people indicted are George and Philip Norcross; Brown; former Camden Mayor Dana Redd; George Norcross’ personal attorney, William Tambussi; and John O’Donnell, an executive in an organization that like NFI moved into Triad1828 and who is also described in the indictment as a member of the group that owns some of the Camden real estate that is the focus of the charges.
“From approximately 2012 to 2013, members and associates of the Norcross Enterprise used their political influence to tailor New Jersey economic development legislation to their preferences,” the indictment says in one of its opening pages.
When the legislation the Norcross group backed became law in 2013, according to the indictment, the Norcross Enterprise — prosecutors capitalize the name — “did extort and coerce others to obtain — for certain individuals and business entities — property rights on the Camden, New Jersey waterfront and associated tax incentive credits.”
By moving into those properties, various companies associated with George Norcross were able to obtain tax credits that were designed to incentivize redevelopment. Those tax credits could then be sold.
More than $7 million in credit with more to come
Financial benefit to NFI totaled $7.866 million through 2023, the amount of Grow New Jersey tax credits that were enabled by the 2013 legislation, according to the indictment. NFI sold those credits for $7.186 million.
But they aren’t done. According to the indictment, the right to earn tax credits under Grow New Jersey extends to 2030. The owners of the developments at the center of the Norcross activities — including 1828Triad and the residential building known as 11 Cooper — have $211 million in additional credits to claim.
According to the indictment, when the state announced the Grow New Jersey credits to be awarded to various Camden office building tenants in March 2017, it put the size of the credits NFI could expect to earn for its residency at Triad1828 at about $79.3 million.
The indictment also reveals — though it has no bearing on issues related to Brown’s involvement with Norcross — that Brown earned about $60 million from NFI between 2012 and 2023.
The indictment obtained recorded direct conversations, strongly suggesting somebody in the Norcross universe has been cooperating for some time with New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin, who brought the indictment. He announced it at a press conference Monday that featured the odd sight of Norcross sitting in the front row of the audience before holding court with the media afterward.
One recorded conversation, according to the indictment, features George Norcross telling a recalcitrant unnamed developer who resisted giving up development rights he owned on the river that he would “f— you up like you’ve never been f—– before.” In another recording, Norcross refers to the developer as a “putz.”
The reaction to the Norcross indictment in the New York/New Jersey area was enormous, given the power he has been long known to wield in South New Jersey and by extension the state as a whole.
As Politico wrote of the indictment: “New Jersey political insiders struggled to come up with big enough words to describe what they were hearing: The state attorney general was about to indict South Jersey Democratic power broker George Norcross, one of the most formidable and fearsome operators in state history, on corruption charges.”
The fact that Brown was not as central to the activities that are the subject of the indictment can be seen partly in the fact that while there are 13 counts in the indictment, Brown is named in only eight of them.
But the charges are serious. For example, in count one, all the defendants are charged with racketeering. All are charged with being part of the “Norcross Enterprise,” which the indictment says was “an ongoing organization whose members and associates function as a continuing unit for the common purpose of achieving the objectives of the Enterprise.”
Pressure on a developer
And while there are no quotes in the indictment from Brown quite as stark as Norcross’ threats, it does show Brown as being actively involved in the effort to get that unnamed developer to give up his development rights.
In a recorded October 2016 call to discuss the holdout developer — a call during which Norcross said Camden should “condemn his ass and just move on” — Brown said of the plan the group was coming up with, “A couple of good things would come out of this. It puts pressure on [the developer] to come to the table. He hasn’t had any pressure up to this point.”
Brown then mentions the alleged work of fellow defendant Tambussi to work with government agencies to pressure the developer and says of the plan, “[It] seems we should proceed and go ahead and let Bill get this thing done.”
The other indictments against Brown are:
Conspiracy to commit theft by extortion, criminal coercion, financial facilitation of criminal activity, misconduct corporate official and official misconduct in the first degree.
Five counts of financial facilitation of criminal activity, two separate counts, all involving the tax credits for Triad1828 and 11 Cooper.
Misconduct by a corporate official, second degree, involving the corporate structures for Triad1828 and 11 Cooper.
Norcross also had an indirect trucking tie besides his links to Brown: He is seen as close to Steve Sweeney, the Democrat who was longtime president of the state’s Senate and a major power broker in the Garden State. Sweeney was defeated by Raymour & Flanagan truck driver Edward Durr in 2021 in a shocking upset. Durr was defeated for reelection last November; both he and Sweeney are running for governor in the 2025 election, Durr as a Republican and Sweeney as a Democrat.
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