Δ
Thanks for contacting us. We’ve received your submission.
A retired top policeman helped Robert Menendez’s wife-to-be leave the scene of her fatal car crash without a sobriety test or handing over her phone.
The Post has learned that Michael Mordaga, the former director of Hackensack Police and an ex-chief of detectives in the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, was on the scene within minutes when Nadine Arslanian slammed her black Mercedes into Richard Koop in Bogota, NJ, in December 2018.
Mordaga, 66, helped her leave behind the totaled car and take her belongings from it after quizzing the patrolman dealing with the crash on what he planned to do.
Dashcam footage and 911 recordings do not show Arslanian asking after the victim, but they do show her refusing to have her cellphone searched and also suggest she did not call 911 until officers were already on the scene — then told them the wrong location for the crash.
A witness claimed that she told cops she was going to call someone for help.
At the time, Arslanian was dating both Menendez, whom she married in 2020, and her long-term boyfriend Douglas Anton, an attorney who went to represent R. Kelly in his sex trafficking trial.
The fatal collision on December 12, 2018, led to part of the sweeping bribery and corruption charges brought against her and Menendez, which they both deny.
New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez is facing federal corruption charges related to an alleged years-long scheme.
Menendez allegedly accepted bribes, including gold bars, in exchange for helping three businessmen, Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes, and the country of Egypt, according to officials.
Menendez and his wife, Nadine, were charged with taking hundreds of thousands in bribes, according to a Manhattan federal indictment.
When the feds raided Menendez’s Englewood Cliffs home in June 2022, they found a 2019 Mercedes C-Class, at least 13 gold bars, and $566,000 in cash “stuffed in envelopes.” Another $70,000 in cash was found in Nadine’s safe deposit box.
Menendez and his wife, Nadine, were charged with taking hundreds of thousands in bribes, according to a Manhattan federal indictment.
The feds say Menendez also received mortgage payments and paid for a low-show or no-show job and home furnishings.
This isn’t the first time the 69-year-old Democrat is facing federal corruption charges. In 2015, Menendez was accused of taking gifts from Florida eye surgeon Salomon Melgen.
The “gifts” included a Paris vacation, flights on a private jet, and vacations at Melgen’s villa in the Dominican Republic.
A month after the crash, Arslanian texted Wael Hana, an Egyptian-American businessman also indicted in the bribery scheme, about the loss of her car, and he later provided her with a 2019 Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible, worth $60,000, prosecutors allege.
Arslanian’s role in 49-year-old Koop’s death, however, only emerged Wednesday, in dashcam footage and other records released by the Bogota Police Department to NorthJersey.com.
Menendez’s future wife told cops she didn’t see Koop, 49.
But she was driving her car fast enough that the collision flung Koop’s body to the curb just steps from his own house on East Main St. in Bogota, then crashed into a parked car.