Read the victim statement in the Readington wiretapping case

Readington Deputy Mayor Vinny Panico prepared the following victim statement to be delivered in court today today when two local women, Jacqueline Hindle and Christina Albrecht, who admitted to planting a surveillance device to covertly record his conversation at a local restaurant:

While it seems that Ms. Hindle and Ms. Albrecht may be afforded pre-trial intervention, I am pleading with this court to reconsider and deny PTI.

First, it is important to understand that these crimes are not standalone incidents. They are part of a pattern of escalating behavior over a series of years, dating back to 2016. Since then, Ms. Albrecht has been waging an obsessive campaign against me. In 2016, she falsely tarnished my name within a political group in Readington—aptly called the “Blue Table Cloth Gang”—leading to my excommunication. Fast forward to 2022, Christina’s obsession intensified. I became the focus of her email distribution blog, with email after email misquoting and mischaracterizing me to attack my integrity, ethics, and family—all written and distributed by Ms. Albrecht.

In 2023, Christina escalated her attacks, penning a letter about me and mailing it to a large number of Readington Township residents. When I didn’t respond, she turned her focus to my family. In 2024, Christina played a central role in a baseless and slanderous attack against my sister—solely because of her relation to me. The harassment from Ms. Albrecht and her associates grew so severe that my sister had to hire an attorney to intervene. All of this was still not enough for Christina, as she escalated her actions to the crimes before this court: purchasing not one, but two wiretapping devices, planting them three times, then transcribing and distributing the content.

Meanwhile, Christina and her friends were invading my privacy on a daily basis. The original complaint notes her surveillance of me. I’ve also been witness to that over the years: she and her friends have parked outside of my social events to photograph my guests, they’ve stopped in the road to photograph me in public parks, they have photographed me while eating dinner with my closest friends, and they have even used a zoom lens to take pictures inside my house. They have then threatened to release these harassing photos online, attempting to blackmail me. They have lied about the context and contents of the photos to file baseless police reports against me.

To my surprise, this fall, a member of Christina’s group – the Blue Table Cloth Gang – escalated these attacks even further by physically assaulting me at a community event. While I’ve grown scars from Christina’s slanderous, verbal, and written attacks, I never expected this group to cross the line into physical attacks. They have. And it’s only a matter of time before this wiretapping becomes something worse.

Your Honor, this woman has targeted and harassed me for nine years. While many of her actions did not initially rise to the level of criminality, I have been victimized for almost a decade. She has not stopped, despite personal pleas and legal warnings. PTI will not stop her either. Protective orders often prove ineffective, and Christina will continue to victimize me unless this court denies her PTI and imposes jail time.

Second, granting PTI in this case would set a dangerous precedent. There are numerous examples that support denying PTI in wiretap cases of this gravity:

• In 2008, Anthony Pellicano was convicted of wiretapping and conspiracy to commit wiretapping, among other felonies. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined $2 million by a Federal District Court in Los Angeles.

• In 2006, Robert Pfeifer pleaded guilty to a single count of wiretapping after hiring Pellicano to target his ex-girlfriend. Pfeifer was sentenced to six months in prison.

• Closer to home, in 2015, the deputy director of the Hudson County Correctional Facility, Kirk Eady, was convicted of intercepting communications and sentenced to 21 months in prison by Judge Jose L. Linares.

Your Honor, these examples demonstrate the severity with which wiretapping crimes have historically been treated. Granting PTI in this case would undermine the sanctity of privacy laws, dilute their deterrent effect, and undermine the work of your judicial colleagues.