“Get $200 to work from 3:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. That’s almost $50 an hour!” screamed flyers posted last week around lower Manhattan, telling people to come to Hoboken to work for mayoral candidate Peter Cammarano’s campaign this past Tuesday.

But when more than 100 men and women from New York and Essex County got here, they discovered that the faux flyers were someone’s idea of a joke, designed to cause chaos at the campaign headquarters at the most hectic time of Election Day.

In fact, some of those prospective workers had actually e-mailed the address on the flyers and corresponded with an unknown person before arriving.

Both the campaigns of Cammarano and opponent Dawn Zimmer denied posting the flyers. When a crowd showed up at Cammarano headquarters, some of them were then sent to Zimmer headquarters. Both campaigns ended up giving some of the workers train fare back to New York.

One Hudson County campaign stalwart called last week’s hoax “the dirtiest trick in Hudson County history.” And police are investigating to see who duped the prospective workers, many of whom were unemployed, and some of whom came from Brooklyn and Long Island.

The flyers


The flyer had a copy of Cammarano’s campaign logo on top and offered campaign canvassing jobs for the afternoon of Election Day. It had no “paid for by” tag and read, “I need more people than you can bring. Tell a friend. Cash paid at the end of the night. No one will be turned away.”

Paying cash to campaign workers is illegal. Both campaigns did give $50 checks to their campaign workers for that day.

The flyers contained the address for Cammarano’s campaign headquarters and a Google e-mail address set up to look like a Cammarano campaign address: CammaranoforHoboken09@gmail.com.

Michael Goldberg, a lawyer for Cammarano’s team, said the campaign was made aware of the flyers on Thursday, June 4 and contacted Google to try to have the e-mail account shut down.

Just trying to make some money

A Columbia University student e-mailed the address on June 3 to confirm of the offer.

According to an e-mail presented to the Reporter by the student, he got a reply at 3:19 p.m. the same day from the e-mail address, saying, “All you have to do is show up on Tuesday.” It gave directions from the PATH station to the headquarters.

The response was not signed.

At 1:30 on Election Day, the student and six of his friends showed up early to make sure they were hired for the canvassing.

Another group of job seekers from Manhattan showed up early at Cammarano headquarters, and they were told by a campaign worker, “Go to 618 Washington [Zimmer headquarters] and they’ll take care of you there,” according to the Columbia group and other workers.

After being told by the Zimmer team that they had nothing to do with the flyers, the group went back to Cammarano headquarters to ask for answers.

As they arrived back there, other groups had just shown up to take advantage of the same offer, and the Cammarano worker was telling them the same thing.

“This is just bad politics,” said Reginald Epps of New York, one of the victims of the scam.

He added, “We’re just looking for work.”
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“This is obviously in the context of the hard economic times we are all going through – really pretty despicable.” – John Casey
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Another man who was taken by the scam was John Casey, who e-mailed the Reporter to complain.

He said via e-mail, “Anyone who came to that address – a Cammarano outpost – was told that this was all a hoax, political trickery foisted upon by the Zimmer campaign. Everyone was told to go down five blocks on Washington Street to the Zimmer headquarters and give them hell. And then when people arrived at Zimmer headquarters, their people denied responsibility and said that it was all the Cammarano campaign’s way of just stirring up trouble and disrupting the operations of Zimmer headquarters on Election Day. All, perhaps, very predictable, however the obvious point is one of these campaigns was really playing some really low, slimeball politics here, getting people to give up their afternoons to come out and expecting a nice payday. This is obviously in the context of the hard economic times we are all going through – really pretty despicable.”

Almost 100 people at 3:30

Eventually, the Cammarano team stopped sending the job seekers to the Zimmer headquarters. Instead, police showed up just before a huge throng arrived at the 3:30 call time.

Some of the job seekers were unemployed, and others had notified friends and family of the payday, some of whom took the day off work.

Police took names from almost 100 scam victims. Det. Sgt. Gino Jacobelli said the police are attempting to determine where the e-mail address was created, and possibly by whom. They would not comment on potential charges the perpetrator of the hoax might face. They have not yet involved any other investigatory agencies in the case.

A similar hoax occurred during the initial mayoral election in May. On that Tuesday, someone posted flyers claiming that the campaign of former candidate Beth Mason would pay people $75 to bring in unsigned absentee ballots. No one owned up to that hoax either.

Timothy J. Carroll may be reached at tcarroll@hudsonreporter.com.