Scam put feds on cop’s trail
The FBI investigation of exNYPD Chief of Department Philip Banks grew out of a probe into a suspected liquor-wholesaling scam that turned out to be a $12 million Ponzi scheme.
The feds began investigating businessman Hamlet Peralta over suspicions he was selling “stolen . . . untaxed” booze and was engaged in financial chicanery to cover up funding provided by Banks, confessed cop briber Jona Rechnitz and others, according to an FBI affidavit.
Peralta has admitted he conned a dozen investors.
The case led to a wiretap of Rechnitz’s cellphone, and he secretly pleaded guilty as part of a cooperation deal in June 2016 — two months after The Post revealed the FBI probe.
Last year, Rechnitz was the star witness at the corruption trial of former correction-officers-union chief Norman Seabrook that ended in a hung jury.
Rechnitz is also set to testify next month against ex-NYPD Inspector James Grant and Jeremy Reichberg, a former pal of Rechnitz and a fellow fund-raiser for Mayor de Blasio, in an alleged bribery scheme that involves a 2013 private-plane trip to Las Vegas with a hooker.
Banks may be identified during that trial as an “unindicted coconspirator,” a defense lawyer said in court earlier this month.
A co-defendant in that case, former NYPD Deputy Chief Michael Harrington, struck a plea deal in March for zero to six months in prison.
Harrington had worked under Banks, and a senior law-enforcement official briefed on the federal investigation said prosecutors “wanted Harrington to cooperate and give up Banks.”
“But Harrington never flipped,” the official said. “That ended the possibility of going against Banks.”
Three other ex-cops — Paul Dean, Robert Espinel and Gaetano “Guy” Valastro — are awaiting trial in an unrelated bribery scheme in which the payoffs allegedly included “food, alcohol, parties, dancers and prostitutes.”
Five high-ranking NYPD officials retired after being warned they would face disciplinary charges of accepting illegal gifts, sources have told The Post.