NEW YORK, (Reuters) – A member of a volunteer safety patrol in an Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn was charged yesterday with trying to bribe police officers to obtain gun licences, prosecutors said, in the latest fallout from a wide-ranging corruption probe into the New York City Police Department.
A criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court charged Alex Lichtenstein, 44, with conspiracy and bribery, saying he bragged about having obtained 150 licences through his NYPD connections.
Those statements were recorded by another officer whom Lichtenstein last week offered to pay $6,000 per licence application that he could get through the department’s licence division, prosecutors said.
The complaint said Lichtenstein told the officer he tried to bribe that he charged community members thousands of dollars to help them obtain licences through his NYPD connections.
Lichtenstein was “no less than an arms dealer for the community of New York City,” assistant US attorney Kan Nawaday said in court.
The complaint cited three officers connected to Lichtenstein, including one who told investigators that Lichtenstein paid him and another officer $100 in “lunch money.”
