Blue State Graft Watch- FBI Arrests New Jersey Mayor and Son For Hacking Opposition Website

The Democrat mayor of West New York, NJ along with his son were arrested by the FBI on Wednesday on charges that they hacked a website calling for the mayor's recall and intimidated people who were associated with the page.

The FBI alleges that Joseph Roque, Mayor Felix Roque's 22 year old son, was able to successfully hack into an email account of one of the unnamed victims and then use the email account to cancel the registration of the domain name recallroque.com.

After RecallRoque.com was taken down, the criminal complaint says, Roque placed a telephone call to the proprietor of the website — “Victim 1,” a government official in Hudson County, N.J. — to say that the page had been taken down by “high government officials and that everyone would pay for getting involved against Mayor Roque.”

Roque also allegedly tried to intimidate those involved with the website, telling “Victim 1” that he had a friend on the CIA: “A friend of mine. he works in the — I can’t tell you — three letters — CIA. You know. That’s how I get information. So what I’m doing is not very kosher.”

The mayor of the city of 50,000 and his son are expected to appear in federal court on Thursday where they will face charges of gaining unauthorized access to computers in furtherance of causing damage to protected computers; causing damage to protected computers; and conspiracy to commit those crimes.

Roque himself attempted to gather signatures for a recall of then-incumbent mayor Silverio Vega in 2010, but half the signatures he gathered were deemed invalid.