Gilmore Gets a Year: 366 Days in Jail for Former Ocean County GOP Chair

Ocean County GOP Chairman George R. Gilmore walks with Gov. Chris Christie on the Seaside Heights boardwalk. (Photo: Daniel Nee/Shorebeat)

A one-time political kingmaker and leader of the state’s most powerful county Republican organization with the ability to swing statewide elections, attorney George Gilmore will spend the next year and one day behind bars for his conviction on two counts of failing to pay over payroll taxes withheld from employees to the IRS and one count of making false statements on a bank loan application submitted to Ocean First Bank.

Gilmore, who stepped down from his post as Ocean County GOP chairman, several municipal attorney appointments and a member of the county election board after charges were brought against him last year, was sentenced Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Anne E. Thompson, sitting in Trenton.

Gilmore, 70, of Toms River, was acquitted of two counts of filing false tax returns for calendar years 2013 and 2014; the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on one count of income tax evasion for calendar years 2013, 2014, and 2015. Gilmore’s defense team said their client did not intentionally defraud the government, but instead squandered his money due to a hoarding disorder and was unable to pay.

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According to court documents, Gilmore worked as an equity partner and shareholder at Gilmore & Monahan P.A., a law firm in Toms River, where he exercised primary control over the firm’s financial affairs. Because he exercised significant control over the law firm’s financial affairs, Gilmore was responsible for withholding payroll taxes from the gross salary and wages of the law firm’s employees to cover individual income, Social Security and Medicare tax obligations. For the tax quarters ending March 31, 2016, and June 30, 2016, the law firm withheld tax payments from its employees’ checks, but Gilmore failed to pay over in full the payroll taxes due to the IRS.

Gilmore also submitted a loan application to Ocean First Bank containing false statements, the government charged. On Nov. 21, 2014, Gilmore reviewed, signed, and submitted to OceanFirst Bank a Uniform Residential Loan Application (URLA) to obtain refinancing of a mortgage loan for $1.5 million with a “cash out” provision that provided Gilmore would obtain cash from the loan. On Jan. 22, 2015, Gilmore submitted another URLA updating the initial application. Gilmore failed to disclose his outstanding 2013 tax liabilities and personal loans that he had obtained from others on the URLAs. Gilmore received $572,000 from the cash out portion of the loan.

In addition to the prison term, Judge Thompson sentenced Gilmore to three years of supervised release.

Gilmore’s name had not yet appeared in a database of federal inmates by early Thursday morning.