No Show Job cutting hair at the Psych Hosptial

Cosmo Cerrigone, barber to James Treffinger, was ordered yesterday to repay New Jersey's Essex County $57,000 for haircuts he never gave in a government job he rarely showed up for. Treffinger was sentenced last week to 13 months in prison on fraud and obstruction charges related to the investigation.

For nearly seven years, Cosmo Cerrigone, a popular 56-year-old Cedar Grove stylist, accepted a county salary that ranged as high as $17,000 to cut hair for psychiatric patients at the Essex County Hospital Center. The hospital is two miles from Vie Veneto, a men's salon where Cerrigone and his brother have wielded scissors, clippers and blow dryers for decades.

But Cerrigone rarely reported to the hospital. When confronted by the FBI in April 2002, he told agents the phantom job was a reward after he "agreed to use his substantial contacts in the community to secure votes for Treffinger," according to a presentencing memo prepared by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Perry Carbone and Nelson Thayer.