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Geno Marconi used his authority as the New Hampshire Ports Director in an attempt to drive a rival business out of Rye Harbor, according to a lawsuit filed on Friday in Merrimack Superior Court.

The lawsuit, brought by the owners of the popular Rye Harbor Lobster Pound, may shed light on the criminal charges against Marconi and the scandal that’s ensnared his wife, Associate Supreme Court Justice Anna Barbara Hantz-Marconi.

Rye Harbor Lobster Pound owners Sylvia Cheever and Nathan Hansom claim Marconi has been trying to bounce their business for years in order to aid his sister, Francesca Marconi Fernald, who operates Geno’s Chowder & Sandwich Shop, a restaurant started by their parents.

According to the lawsuit, Geno Marconi made it impossible for customers to park at the Rye Harbor Lobster Pound, interfered with its business relationship with local lobster fishermen, and imposed a unique “concession fee” shakedown.

“The series of actions taken against Rye Harbor Lobster Pound were driven by Marconi’s desire to harm a competitor to his family business and in retaliation against the Plaintiffs who were not part of Marconi’s network of allied businesses and individuals who worked for or were otherwise connected with the Port Authority,” the lawsuit states.

The concession fee, which took effect in 2023, was a 10 percent tax on RHLP’s gross monthly revenue. In total, the PDA forced RHLP to hand over more than $115,000 in 2023 and 2024.

According to the lawsuit, no other harbor business pays a similar fee at that rate.

“Upon information and belief, no other business was subject to a concessions agreement which required to payment of so-called concessions fees during this time period,” the lawsuit states. 

RHLP has been operating since 1996, and selling prepared food since 2005, according to the lawsuit. The business, like others in the same location, has paid the same $1,000 fee for its right to operate at the harbor, which is controlled by the PDA.

Another business in the harbor which sells prepared food, Rye Harborside, pays the $1,000 minimum fee to operate. Rye Harborside is owned by Granite State Whale Watch, which has connections to Marconi, the lawsuit states.

“Granite State Whale Watch is owned and operated by Sue Reynolds and her son Pete Reynolds. Sue Reynolds’s partner is Leo Axtin, who at all times relevant to this complaint was the Rye Harbor Master and reported to Marconi as the port director,” the lawsuit states.

Marconi began the campaign against the RHLP in 2020, according to Cheever and Hanscom’s lawsuit, after the business managed to succeed despite the COVID-19 lockdowns, according to the lawsuit. Marconi began by trying to force RHLP to stop selling chowder. He failed.

In 2021 the PDA, with pressure from Marconi, refused to grant RHLP a concession agreement for the 2021 season, according to the lawsuit.

Following a public outcry, then-Gov. Chris Sununu stepped in and granted RHLP a waiver to operate. Marconi then had state employees monitor RHLP, Cheever, Hanscom, and their customers, taking videos and keeping a daily activity log, according to the lawsuit.

In subsequent years, the PDA and Marconi reportedly required RHLP to hire security details, undertake building renovations, and remove outdoor seating. Now, Cheever and Hanscom are concerned the PDA will try to block them from operating for the 2025 season.

The lawsuit is seeking an injunction against the PDA allowing Cheever and Hanscom to operate without being subjected to arbitrary rules and without paying Marconi’s shakedown money. They also want monetary damages for the harm Marconi and the PDA reportedly did to their business.

Marconi was suspended last year by the PDA as the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office opened its criminal investigation into his sketchy behavior. He’s since been indicted for allegedly leaking private driver’s license information and destroying evidence. Marconi recently filed paperwork to retire from his state job.

This isn’t the first time Marconi’s been the subject of a work-related controversy. In 2006, Marconi was accused of misusing public resources for his own benefit, taking improper gifts like lobsters and liquor in his role as ports director, and using racist slurs about a ship captain trying to do business with the state.

A subsequent drive-by shooting at the home of one witness who complained about Marconi has gone unsolved. No one was ever charged for shooting or other threats made against witnesses. Marconi has denied involvement.

Lawyers for Associate Supreme Court Justice Anna Barbara Hantz-Marconi say the state’s key witness, former Gov. Chris Sununu, doesn’t think she committed any crime.

Hantz-Marconi is charged with felonies for allegedly trying to get Sununu to end the criminal investigation targeting her husband, Ports Director Geno Marconi, during a June 6 meeting in Sununu’s office. 

But in a bombshell filing made public Monday night, Hantz-Marconi’s lawyers say new evidence demands the criminal charges against the sitting justice be dismissed. According to the transcripts filed with Hantz-Marconi’s motion, Sununu told investigators she never tried to get him to interfere in the criminal investigation.

“No, there was no ask, there was nothing, ‘Governor, I wish you could do this,’ or there was nothing like that,” Sununu said according to the transcript. “She was expressing frustration. Clearly not asking me to do anything.”

Defense lawyers Richard Guerriero and Jonathan Kotlier filed the transcripts Friday in Merrimack Superior Court as part of their effort to have the charges dismissed. The attorneys previously filed a motion to dismiss the charges for lack of a crime, to which the state objected. However, the state provided the transcripts to the defense before a decision on the dismissal was made. Guerriero and Kotlier say the state has essentially now proven there was no crime.

“[N]ow that discovery has been produced, it is clear that the defense was exactly right to ask the court to dismiss the indictments because they do not state any crime and because there is nothing in discovery which would inform a bill of particulars or an amended indictment such that the state could allege a crime,” Guerriero and Kotlier wrote.

Hantz-Marconi is currently on leave from the Supreme Court and has agreed to have her law license suspended pending the outcome of the criminal case. She maintains she never crossed any legal or ethical lines when talking to Sununu, an assertion seemingly backed by Sununu’s own words.

“I, I didn’t get the sense that, I didn’t get the sense that anything was illegal about the conversation,” Sununu told investigators. “No, I mean about halfway through the conversation I kept waiting, is she gonna ask me for something, or for something, or to do something, like and even imply that I should, ‘Governor, you need to dah, dah, dah,’ no, never came. So there’s technically no ask of me.”

Present at the June 6 meeting with Sununu and Hantz-Marconi was Rudy Ogden, Sununu’s then-legal counsel. Ogden also told investigators that the judge never asked Sununu to get involved in her husband’s investigation.

“[T]hat’s why I say in terms of her not asking for anything, it – it never was, it never went more than saying this needs to end quickly…Like it was never, ‘it needs to end quickly, and geez, if you talk to them, you should tell them that, or this needs to end quickly, and I think you can do that.’ It was never anything like that,” Ogden told investigators.

Geno Marconi was placed on leave from his position as Ports Director in April while the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office launched an investigation. That pending investigation forced Hantz-Marconi to recuse herself from hearing cases involving the Department of Justice, a significant part of the caseload for the Supreme Court.

Her frustration at sitting out 20 to 25 percent of the cases led her to speak to Sununu, according to statements filed in court. Hantz-Marconi has previously disclosed she first cleared the potential ethical problems of the meeting with Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald, who told her she had a right to talk to the governor about her concerns.

She is also accused of trying to get Pease Development Authority Chair Steven Duprey to intervene in her husband’s suspension, an accusation Duprey denied when he spoke to investigators, according to the Friday filing.

“According to Duprey, Justice Hantz Marconi ‘was calling, obviously, because I’m a friend.’”

Duprey told the investigators Hantz-Marconi understood he had no say in the investigation, and she never asked him to get involved. Instead she wanted to vent about the difficulties she was facing as a result of her husband’s legal troubles, Duprey said. 

“I think she was very appropriate in not trying to cross the line,” Duprey said.

Geno Marconi was indicted last October along with Brad Cook, the chairman of the Division of Ports and Harbors Advisory Council and a longtime fishing boat captain. They are accused of crimes involving leaking information about an unnamed victim to further an unstated motive.

Marconi illegally provided Cook with the confidential driving records of another person, known in the indictments as N.L., according to the indictments, and believed to be PDA Vice Chair Neil Levesque. 

Marconi also is alleged to have deleted a voicemail in order to hinder any investigation, the indictments state. Cook, for his part, is accused of lying to the grand jury when questioned about N.L.’s driving records.

In a statement, Attorney General John Formella’s office defended the decision to charge Hantz Marconi.

“The Merrimack County Grand Jury heard all of the evidence in this case and determined that there was probable cause to charge the defendant with the crimes for which she was indicted. This case will continue to proceed as required by New Hampshire law, and the defendant will be entitled to the same due process as any other defendant – no more, no less. We will try this case in court based on all of the evidence collected and not in the media using just a portion of that evidence.”

Why is state Supreme Court Justice Barbara Hantz Marconi is on administrative leave — a drastic action rarely taken by a sitting jurist? New Hampshire officials won’t say.

Is it related to the grand jury now reportedly convened to consider criminal charges against husband, Geno Marconi? Again, no word.

“This must shake the faith that citizens should expect to have in their public institutions and those who work for them as well as those who have oversight for them,” the New Hampshire Union-Leader editorialized this weekend.

Without information from the Sununu administration or the judiciary, speculation has turned to Geno Marconi and his troubled past.

Geno Marconi was placed on leave as the Director for the New Hampshire Division of Ports and Harbors in April. The reasons for the action have not been made clear, but it has been known for weeks that he is being investigated by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.

NHPR reports witnesses are being called to testify before a grand jury. Grand jury proceedings are secret and officials will not comment unless and until indictments are handed up.

Marconi’s colorful past includes 2006 allegations he misused public resources for his own benefit, that he took improper gifts like lobsters and liquor in his role as ports director, and he used racist slurs about a ship captain trying to do business with the state.

The troubling aftermath of the 2006 complaints against Marconi include a drive-by shooting at the home of one of the witnesses and alleged other threats. No one was ever charged for shooting or other threats, and Marconi has denied involvement.

Last week, the public learned for the first time that Justice Hantz Marconi has been recusing herself from cases involving the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office. Though she has sat in on oral arguments in cases involving the state’s top law enforcement agency, Hantz Marconi has reportedly not taken part in deliberations or decisions in those cases. 

Geno Marconi kept his job after apologizing in 2006 for reportedly calling a ship captain of Middle Eastern descent a “sand n*gger” a “camel jockey,” and a “towel head.” He was also accused of calling someone else a “New York Jew with the chink wife.” 

Geno Marconi told investigators that while he likely did use the term “sand n*gger” it was not about that particular captain. He also denied making the other remarks. He was required to undergo sensitivity training as a result of the investigation.

There were also complaints about his management practices. According to a New Hampshire Attorney General’s supplemental report, Marconi took advantage of his position in several ways: he used his state-issued truck for personal errands like picking up sheetrock; he used a state forklift to drop private boat moorings; stored his private boat as a state dock; and took gifts like lobsters, pheasant, and a bottle of ouzo from ship captains and fishermen who did business with the Port of New Hampshire.

Portsmouth Development Authority Officials would tell investigators that while Marconi operated within the rules in those instances, reforms would be considered going forward. 

A year later, Bill Roach, one of the longshoremen who complained about Marconi’s behavior, reported someone shot at his Rye home. Soon after that, a fake headstone with Roach’s initials and the initials RIP was found at the port. A short time later, a cage of dead rats was left outside Roach’s home. 

Despite three separate police investigations, no charges were ever brought for the threats against Roach. Marconi denied any involvement. Roach was president of the International Longshoremen’s Association and at the time he and several other longshoremen filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the state and the port. The lawsuit claimed Marconi took away their port jobs after they made their complaints about his alleged slurs.

The lawsuit ended up being dismissed when the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled the longshoremen were contractors and not state employees. As such, they did not qualify for whistleblower protection. 

Hatz Marconi built a career as a private lawyer, becoming a shareholder at the law firm of Sheehan, Phinney, Bass and Green. Gov. Chris Sununu nominated Hantz Marconi to be Associate Supreme Court Justice in 2017. 

Now she’s on mandatory leave and, for the moment, Granite Staters continue to be left in the dark.