In June 2022, U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, his wife, and three New Jersey businessmen were charged with bribery offenses. Previous to the arrest, the FBI executed a search warrant at the New Jersey home of the senator and during that search, the FBI found many of the ill-gotten gains of this bribery scheme, including cash, gold bars, the luxury convertible, and home furnishings. Over $480,000 in cash — much of it stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets, and a safe — was discovered in the home, as well as over $70,000 in cash in Nadine Menendez’s safe deposit box, which was also searched pursuant to a separate search warrant.
The indictment accused Menendez of secretly aiding the authoritarian regime of Egypt and trying to interfere with U.S. policy and investigations related to the country. Menendez has denied the charges and vowed to fight them in court.
Now it seems that at least 4 of the gold bars found in the search had been directly linked to a New Jersey businessman who is now accused of bribing Menendez.
Bergen County prosecutor’s records from a 2013 robbery case show that the businessman, Fred Daibes, reported to police that he was the victim of an armed robbery in 2013, and he asked police to recover the gold bars stolen from him. Daibes reported that $500,000 in cash and 22 gold bars were stolen, Edgewater, New Jersey, police records show. Police later caught four people with the stolen goods.
To get his property back, Daibes signed “property release forms” certifying the gold bars belonged to him, the records show.
“Each gold bar has its own serial number,” Daibes told investigators in a 2013 transcript made by prosecutors and police who recovered — and returned to Daibes — the stolen valuables. “They’re all stamped…you’ll never see two stamped the same way.”
A decade later, it said, the FBI found four gold bars with unique serial numbers in the Clifton, New Jersey home of Menendez and his wife, Nadine.
The serial numbers of the four gold bars found in the bribery indictment are the exact matches to four of the gold bars Daibes certified as having been stolen and returned to him in the 2013 robbery case. As Daibes underlined in 2013, the numbers are unique.
Federal investigators allege that Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., received bribes in the form of these gold bars.
“All of this spells bad news for Sen. Menendez, because the chain of custody — it appears — is going to be really easy to prove up,” NBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos said.
Cevallos did point out that if Daibes did in fact, give gold bars to Bob and Nadine Menendez, that alone does not prove the crime of bribery.
“Was there a quid pro quo? Was it in exchange for the senator’s official acts — or promises of the same?” Cevallos said.
The FBI said the quid pro quo between Menendez and Daibes included efforts by Menendez to influence the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office, which in 2018 was investigating Daibes in relation to a separate crime of bank fraud.
Menendez has denied taking payoffs from Daibes even though prosecutors allege testing shows Daibes’ fingerprints and DNA are on some of the tens of thousands of dollars in cash found in Menendez’s home.
“The allegations against me are just that — allegations,” Menendez said at a news conference in his home state in September after the bribery indictment was unsealed.
