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Ex-Westwood, Ridgewood Councilman Admits Role In Massage Parlor Sex Case

WESTWOOD, N.J. -- Former Westwood and Ridgewood councilman Bob Miller admitted in federal court on Wednesday that he sold bogus training certificates to workers who wanted to sell sex at massage parlors in four different counties, authorities said.

Bob Miller

Bob Miller

Photo Credit: FACEBOOK photo

As part of his plea agreement, Robert W. Miller agreed to forfeit $95,926 -- which .S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman said consists of $25,826 seized from his Westwood home in August of 2013, as well as an additional $70,100 in ill-gotten gains that he surrended to the FBI in December 2014.

Sentencing was scheduled for May 19.

Miller, 67, who resigned from the Westwood Council last July after seven years, pleaded guilty in Newark federal court to an information charging him with using facilities in interstate commerce to promote prostitution, and performing an act to promote, manage, establish, carry on and facilitate that unlawful activity.

Miller was a Ridgewood councilman from 1996 to 1998.

He owned and operated RWM Associates Inc., which Fishman said "purported to provide personnel department services for small and medium-sized businesses."

Miller "held himself out as a businessman who, for a fee of $500 to $2,500, could provide a massage therapy training certificate to anyone who wished to obtain a massage license with the State of New Jersey without receiving the required training," the U.S. attorney said. "He also offered to provide a transcript listing the classes purportedly taken and the grades received by customers willing to pay for the fraudulent massage training certificate."

Between January 1997 and August 2013, Fishman, said, Miller "provided at least 50 fraudulent massage therapy training certificates to 25 different massage parlors located in Union, Passaic, Hudson and Middlesex counties.

"He admitted he knew that many of the massage parlors were being operated as fronts for prostitution and that the phony documents allowed the workers to continue to engage in prostitution activities under the guise of providing legitimate massage services," the U.S. attorney said.

"Miller also used A.R.M. Enterprises L.L.C., a separate company which he owned, to place advertisements in newspapers for massage parlors using discrete wording which signaled that the massage parlor was also a prostitution business," Fishman added.

He credited the FBI with making the case, handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark J. McCarren of Fishman's Special Prosecutions Division in Newark.       

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