By Ed Beeson
Herald News (Passaic County, NJ)
Copyright 2006 North Jersey Media Group Inc.,
All Rights Reserved
The press release has only good things to say about Jersey songwriter Bob Kosch.
Kosch, who grew up in Hawthorne and now lives part-time in Bloomingdale, wrote and recorded a folksy tribute to the 343 firefighters who died during the Sept. 11 attacks on New York. Called “343,” the song was released as a benefit for the International Association of Fire Fighters, which represents more than 275,000 firefighters in the United States and Canada.
The release includes a letter from the IAFF to Kosch, thanking him for promising to donate most of the proceeds to the agency.
But context is everything these days, and Kosch, busy promoting his song to local media outlets, left out an important piece of his own story: his prison record.
When he wrote “343,” Kosch was in the Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution, serving a 60-month sentence for wire fraud.
Nor was that his only stay. Over the past 27 years, Robert J. Kosch Jr., 49, has served time for writing bad checks; dealing cocaine; defrauding banks; and swindling poor, mostly minority, families out of hundreds, if not thousands, of hard-earned dollars.
He spent most of the 1990s behind bars for running a Bergen County mortgage-financing company that schemed people with false promises of guaranteed mortgages. He was arrested in 1999 for using a phony name to file fraudulent loan papers that amassed him more than $400,000.
He also has had nearly a million dollars in judgments levied against him since 1999.
Kosch’s most recent prison stay ended about two months ago, according to his lawyer, Robert DeGroot. He was released from Fort Dix to serve out his sentence — incidentally handed down on Sept. 12, 2001 — at a halfway house in Newark. He is allowed, with permission from his supervisory staff, to stay part-time at his residence in Bloomingdale, an unfinished two-story home with a wrap-around porch that sits atop a gravel-paved driveway.
Since leaving prison, Kosch has stayed busy with “343.” He assembled his band, Downward Departure, which features a guitarist he met at Fort Dix. He says he delivered more than 1,000 free CDs to firehouses across the tri-state area. He paid for ads that ran on the New York radio station WPLJ 95.5. Both WPLJ and 77 WABC are running contests to win an autographed copy of “343.”
A privately owned Los Angeles label called Monom Records released “343.” Owned by a friend of someone Kosch met in prison, the label sells the song on its Web site, , for $5 per CD and $2.85 for digital download. Dimitri Kiris, who owns Monom, said he is registering Monom to become a nonprofit organization. Launched in 2004, the label has no previous experience with charity records.
Kosch said he arranged for a trustee to track sales and distribute proceeds to charity. The “trustee” is Rohan Michael Peck, a Long Island-based graphic designer whose firm, BP Design, was hired by Monom Records to build its Web site and create its online store.
“We are the front end,” Peck said. “Then we hand over the funding to Monom Records and Downward Departure,” he said. “They’re handling all the disbursement.”
Beyond his business partners, Kosch has told few people about his past. One exception &mdsh; his publicist, George Dassinger of Little Falls &mdsh; opted not to mention Kosch’s prison record in the press release. He voiced surprise when told by a reporter about the extent of his client’s criminal history.
An Essex County firefighter who met Kosch had a similar reaction. “I’m shocked, to say the least,” said the firefighter, who asked that his name not be printed. “When we first met him, he seemed like a genuine guy.”
Some who are familiar with Kosch’s record voice doubts about his good intentions.
“Mr. Kosch has never indicated that he had concern for anyone and any group other than his own personal financial gain,” Bergen County First Assistant Prosecutor William Galda said. “Based on his past dealings with the public, his only goal is to make money for himself.”
Others distanced their organizations from him. Spokesmen for both the IAFF and the New York Fire Department said that, although they had received “343,” their organizations do not, as a policy, endorse such efforts.
“Hopefully, he’s aboveboard on everything he says and everything he does,” NYFD spokesman Jim Long said.
Not everyone viewed Kosch’s past as indicative of his future.
“The Christian in me says that everyone can turn around and get another chance,” said Passaic Fire Department Chief T.N. Zayatz. He called Kosch’s song “a nice effort” and said the department is considering letting him perform at its annual May 7 memorial service.
Essex County Prosecutor Paula T. Dow, who successfully prosecuted Kosch after his 1999 arrest, said through her spokesman Paul Loriquet, “the intentions were very thoughtful and it was a very fitting tribute to the fallen firefighters.”
Kosch’s lawyer believes his client has aged out of crime. “At the age he is, you just kind of get tired of the prison system,” DeGroot said. “Just from talking to him, I think he’s had his epiphany.”
That “epiphany” is now part of Kosch’s marketing plan. He says he learned to play guitar and write lyrics in prison, an experience he calls therapeutic. “I really kind of credit the music for unraveling things in my head,” he said.
Kosch is a burly man with rough-hewn features, gray eyes and a mole aside his nose. On a recent afternoon spent sitting on his porch, he showed off his skill with a guitar, spun colorful yarns and joked, “You got a better chance of getting run over by a herd of zebra on Broadway in Manhattan than me bouncing a check.”
His only interest now, he says, is to develop a music career. Asked why he didn’t divulge his prison record publicly, Kosch turned serious. “It’s not something you volunteer upfront,” he said.
He maintains that bad business deals caused him to fall into deep debt, which led him to defraud people and write bad checks, just as he cheated in school to cope with learning disabilities. “You just go back to what is hard-wired in your head as a kid,” he said.
But that is the past, Kosch said. “It is history. I have nothing hanging over my head. I am in the best spot in my life.”
New Jersey court records paint a different picture. Since his 1999 arrest, Kosch has open judgments against him totaling $887,361.23. (Kosch says he is only $400,000 in debt, “give or take,” an amount he said he can settle by selling property he owns and finalizing some lawsuits.)
With so much debt, how can Kosch make people trust him?
“Well, you know what? You can’t,” he said.
But trust is not an issue, he maintained. Documents related to charitable giving will be placed on Monom’s Web site, he said, and a charity watchdog group will oversee the accounting. When asked the name of that group, however, Kosch could not immediately provide it.
“There are fail-safe systems intact,” Kosch insisted. “Not a dime that anyone puts out on a charge card comes back to me. They’re welcome to contact Monom. They’re welcome to contact (trustee) Michael Peck. They really don’t have to trust me.”