ASBURY PARK PRESS :: MONMOUTH EDITION

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PRESS INVESTIGATION

AGENCY FUNDED
YESHIVA LOANS
$2 MILLION
Amount in loans given by Lakewood Tenants Organization to Tashbar of Lakewood, a boys yeshiva run by agencys chief
executive officer

$15 MILLION

STAFF PHOTO

Joanne Jodry of Neptune City with her

daughter, Mary, at the Asbury Park Press
offices in Neptune on Tuesday.

N.J. wont
let cancer
patient
swap photo
ERIK LARSEN @ERIK_LARSEN

Amount of annual rental assistance vouchers the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development wants to pull from
agency

$1 MILLION
Amount of yearly administrative fees HUD
also wants to take from Lakewood Tenants
Organization
Rabbi Meir N. Hertz, dean of the yeshiva.
FILE PHOTO

THOMAS P. COSTELLO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Tashbar of Lakewood yeshiva at 655 Princeton Ave. on Tuesday.

Lakewood nonprofit already targeted by HUD

SHANNON MULLEN @MULLENAPP

LAKEWOOD A local housing agency that receives federal funds

to administer the townships low-income housing program has given $2 million in loans to a boys yeshiva run by the agencys chief
executive officer, an Asbury Park Press investigation has found.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development,
which wants to pull some $15 million in annual rental assistance
vouchers and $1 million in yearly administrative fees away from
the agency, the nonprofit Lakewood Tenants Organization Inc., declined comment on the loans other than to say that the federal funds
See AGENCY, Page 8A

Ever since Joanne Jodry was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer in
April, she has struggled not to let the
disease define her.
Then last Thursday she went to the
Freehold office of the state Motor Vehicle Commission and was reduced to despair.
Jodry, 53, of Neptune City, wanted to
renew her drivers license and asked if
she could keep her old photo with her
long, flowing blond hair.
When I got there, they told me that I
needed to take a new photo, said Jodry,
who described all but one member of
the staff there as cold and detached
in a word, bureaucratic.
While this Monmouth University
professor of psychology and mother of
one has lost her hair to chemotherapy
and concedes that the cancer has taken
its toll on her appearance, she is upbeat,
optimistic and uses the word resilient to describe herself. The photo
meant more to her than just a picture.
Clearly, I am bald and I have no eyelashes, and this is a temporary condition, Jodry said. I said, Im undergoing chemotherapy, and I will look very
different in a few months. And I said,
Id rather not take a picture. Id rather
use the old one. They said no.
Jodry said the clerk behind the
counter explained he had no choice.
The MVC computer system would not
permit the use of the old photo with the
new license. However, several months
earlier, Jodry explained that she had
accompanied her 79-year-old mother to
See CANCER, Page 11A

Prison for man in Vianney,

Allentown H.S. swatting
KATHLEEN HOPKINS @KHOPKINSAPP

A series of so-called swatting incidents at schools

in several states, including two high schools in Monmouth County, led to a federal prison term Tuesday for
a Connecticut man who orchestrated the hoax threats.
Chief U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall, sitting in
New Haven, Connecticut, sentenced Matthew Tollis,
22, of Wethersfield to 12 months and one day in federal
prison for the series of threats in 2014 to schools that
included St. John Vianney High School in Holmdel and
Allentown High School.
A fake threat was called in to St. John Vianney High
School on Jan. 15, 2014, by a person claiming he was accosted in a school bathroom by a masked gunman with
sarin gas who was threatening to blow up the school,
according to court documents.
Scores of police descended on the high school with
guns drawn that day to look for an armed intruder and
bombs. A student hiding behind a door suffered a concussion during the incident when a law enforcement officer breached the door, authorities said.
The following day, some 3,000 students in the Upper

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Matthew Tollis was a member of a group of

Microsoft X-Box gamers that used Skype to
make hoax threats to schools, authorities say.
COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT

Freehold Regional District were evacuated after

someone called the districts Allentown High School
and falsely claimed there was a bomb in a lavatory, authorities said.
The practice of making hoax calls to elicit evacuations and deployments of bomb squads, SWAT teams
and other police units has come to be known as swatting.
Authorities said Tollis was a member of a group of
Microsoft X-Box gamers that used Skype, an Internet
communication device, to make the hoax threats about
bombs, hostage taking, firearms and mass murder, authorities said. Tollis was identified as a particiSee SWATTING, Page 11A

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VOLUME 136
NUMBER 240
SINCE 1879

Can Trump be tycoon

and president too? 1B