Since April 2013, roughly 56 public officials have been convicted of crimes related to their office and were forced out of holding public office by the New Jersey Forfeiture of Public Office statute.

The nearly five-dozen officials on a list provided by the state Attorney General's Office who pleaded guilty to or were convicted at trial of a gamut of crimes over that period of years offers a glimpse of a far more extensive list of officials convicted of cheating the public, directly or indirectly, out of its tax dollars, according to the AG's office.

Their crimes included:

• Bilking public schools and taking millions of dollars in bribes (Superintendent of Toms River Regional School District Michael J. Ritacco on April 5, 2012).
• Cheating the New Jersey Turnpike Authority out of $1.5 million through inflated insurance claims (NJTA claims manager Gerardo Blasi on Dec. 11, 2013).
• Producing fraudulent state birth certificates to sell (Newark city employee Cory Cooke on Nov. 21, 2014).
• Purchasing gift cards with city credit cards for personal expenses (ex-Brick Housing Authority Director Alesia Watson on May 8, 2017).
• Assaulting a hospital patient and repeatedly distributing narcotics. (Paterson Police Officer Ruben McAusland was sentenced to 66 months in prison in March 2019 and a forfeiture order was filed July 1, 2019, to remove him from the police force).

Now the most recent New Jersey politician threatened with the Forfeiture Act is former Atlantic City Mayor Frank M. Gilliam Jr., who resigned Oct. 3 for using $87,000 in donated funds not for a youth basketball program as intended but on himself for trips and expensive clothing.