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Earlier that year, the men — Jeremy Reichberg and Jona Rechnitz — had invited police officials aboard a private jet headed to Las Vegas for Super Bowl weekend at the MGM Grand. Reichberg had solicited a prostitute to join them, and selected a sexy stewardess outfit for her to wear on the flight.
In exchange for these favors, Reichberg and Rechnitz wanted police to take care of parking tickets, moving violations, even personal disputes.
Police officials did that and more, federal prosecutors said. One officer, James Grant, a former police deputy inspector, helped Reichberg quickly obtain a full-carry gun license that he did not qualify for and ordered officers to investigate a suspected trespasser at a building associated with Rechnitz, according to court documents.
Now, Grant, 45, and Reichberg, 44, are co-defendants in a federal bribery trial in Manhattan, and Rechnitz, who pleaded guilty to honest services wire fraud, is the government’s star witness.
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Over the past six weeks, a parade of witnesses in federal court have described years of sordid and petty corruption — police commanders doing favors in exchange for junkets, prostitutes and luxury gifts. The graft involved senior officials and touched the highest echelon of the department. The trial has even cast a cloud over City Hall and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who received large donations from the same businessmen but has not been accused of wrongdoing. Closing arguments are expected this week.
“This is at its core a straightforward case of old-fashioned bribery,” federal prosecutor Jessica Lonergan said in her opening remarks. “They asked for police action big or small, and Grant, and others did what they could.”
The defense’s attempt to call de Blasio as a witness was well publicized. Rechnitz, the wealthy son of a real estate developer, testified in a previous corruption trial that he had a close relationship with de Blasio, bragging that his donations to the mayor had won him access to City Hall and preferential treatment from officials. In the end, the judge declined to subpoena the mayor.
Defense lawyers have painted Rechnitz as a liar who has spun false stories to save himself from a long prison term. “He cannot tell the truth for anything,” John Meringolo, attorney for Grant, said in opening remarks.
He argued Grant was simply friends with the two businessmen.
Reichberg’s lawyer, Susan R. Necheles, described her client as a “nerdy, geeky, police buff” who had only used his friendships with police officials to help his community and to get police coverage for Hasidic synagogues. “It is not a crime to be friends with a police officer,” she said.
The Fix-It Guy and the Money Man
Prosecutors have portrayed Reichberg as a “fix-it guy” who tapped his police connections to help friends and associates with moving and parking violations for a fee. Beyond the money, being able to call upon police for favors when he wanted it “made him appear important to his community,” Lonergan said.
Reichberg, for instance, once charged a man $2,500 to help him get out of jail in 2015 after he crashed into a vehicle and was arrested for driving with a suspended license. With a lawyer’s help, Reichberg got the man out of jail the following morning — he was only asked to pay a minor violation fee. “I take care of my people,” Reichberg boasted over the phone, according to wiretap evidence.
Grant was a police lieutenant in the 66th precinct in Borough Park, primarily home to Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community, when in 2003 he met Reichberg, an enterprising businessman and a “self-styled liaison” to police, prosecutors said.
By 2007 Rechnitz was working at an international development firm owned by a diamond dealer, Lev Leviev. Described by defense attorneys as a “social climber,” Rechnitz wanted badly to be a “big shot,” federal prosecutors said.
Looking to make an impression, Rechnitz testified he purchased a $5,000 ticket at a 2008 fundraiser that Reichberg held for the Police Department football team. He had heard Reichberg could help him get a city parking placard, which would let him park anywhere, he said.
At the dinner, Rechnitz said he not only got to know Reichberg, but also met Grant and two other police officials — Stephen McAllister and Eddie Gardner — who prosecutors said would later play a role in their conspiracy, though they were not charged in the case.
“I wanted the parking placard, and I wanted to know cops,” Rechnitz, now 35, testified. “Growing up, I’d seen big shots close to politicians, but not police officers.”
Rechnitz and Reichberg soon became close friends who partnered in a backroom business of trading gifts with police officials for favors, federal prosecutors said.
Over the years, Rechnitz dished out hundreds of thousands of dollars on meals at high-end restaurants, sporting events — including New York Knicks tickets — private jets, jewelry, hotel stays, all-expense-paid trips and prostitutes for officers, he testified.
“Jeremy managed the relationships,” Rechnitz said of Reichberg. “He was the guy who dealt with all the police and details, and I was the money man.”
Favors Large and Small
Reichberg’s ability to obtain special favors from law enforcement officials became clear as early as 2008, when he arranged a police escort to accompany Rechnitz’s boss — the diamond dealer — from Teterboro Airport into the city, Rechnitz said. Officers shut down a lane in the Lincoln Tunnel and took Leviev to his Manhattan hotel.
Leviev was impressed and remarked that “this is the treatment he gets in Russia,” said Rechnitz.
McAllister, then an inspector with the department, had used connections in other law enforcement agencies to make the lane closure happen, Rechnitz said. He said McAllister had accepted numerous gifts over the years from him, including a watch, a trip to Miami and a diamond ring for his daughter. McAllister, currently the police commissioner for Floral Park, New York, has previously denied any wrongdoing.
By 2012, Rechnitz had his own firm, JSR Capital, and allowed Reichberg to move into the company’s midtown office on Fifth Avenue, where people seeking help with police matters often met with him. Sometimes, Rechnitz brought clients to Reichberg, and the men would split the profits after Reichberg paid his contacts.
Rechnitz testified that Reichberg also used his connections in the Department of Buildings to expedite permits, and in state court — he tapped New York State Court Officers Association President Dennis Quirk — to get people out of jury duty. Quirk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
They also obtained numerous favors for themselves. In 2014, for instance, Reichberg, to impress Tara Sheils, a nurse he was interested in romantically, arranged for a police sergeant to drive her to and from a nail salon in Brooklyn, she testified. She also said Reichberg had a police officer guard his room when he was hospitalized for minor surgery.
Prosecutors said Reichberg also used his connections to influence promotions within the department. Prosecutors suggested that several of Reichberg’s interactions with then Deputy Police Chief Michael Harrington resulted in the promotion of at least seven officers to their precinct of choice.
A Junket to Las Vegas
Eventually, the men became more bold. Reichberg met a prostitute at a bachelor party at a Midtown hotel in 2013, and later arranged for her to join him and four other men on a private jet to Las Vegas for Super Bowl weekend. Rechnitz said he spent $59,000 for the jet.
The prostitute, Gabriella Curtis, also known as Gabi Grecko, testified that she and Grant engaged in sexual activity on the plane and in the hotel room she shared with him that weekend. She said others in the party also partook in her services.
Grant began to expect gifts and “asked for things to be done,” Rechnitz said. He said he paid for Grant and his wife to stay at a luxury hotel in Rome, for meals at expensive restaurants, for gifts for his children and wife on Christmas and for improvements to the railings and windows at his Staten Island home.
“Merry Xmas Daddy!!!!!” Grant wrote in a text to Reichberg hours after he and Rechnitz delivered gifts to his home on Christmas 2013. “Hope I get what I want … Lol.”
In return, Grant escorted Rechnitz to the airport several times using lights and sirens to speed past traffic, provided special access to parades and arranged for a police escort for one of Rechnitz’s friends who was visiting from Philadelphia.
But the men always wanted more. In 2014, Reichberg and Rechnitz decided they wanted firearms. So Grant, who went by the nickname Jimmy, got some help from a connection in the police department’s licensing division — David Villanueva, one of the unit’s supervisors. Villanueva pleaded guilty to bribery last year and is now a cooperating witness.
“I always did favors for Jimmy; he did favors for me,” Villanueva testified.
Villanueva testified he helped Reichberg get a full-carry gun license in only two months, rather than in the year it usually takes to get one. Another officer in the unit, Richard Ochetal, said he did not flag bogus documents in which Reichberg claimed he needed the gun because he was a manager at Taly Diamonds on Fifth Avenue.
Courting the Chief of Department
Eventually, the pair’s influence reached all the way up to the chief of the department, Philip Banks III, the highest-ranked uniformed official, according to prosecutors. Reichberg and Rechnitz met Harrington through a mutual acquaintance — the former chief’s right-hand man, who was also receiving bribes from the two businessmen.
Soon, Reichberg and Rechnitz were visiting Banks several times a week at 1 Police Plaza, bringing lunch and cigars to his office, and parking in the chief’s spot.
“That was a game-changer,” Rechnitz told the jury. “That was a win for us.”
The men showered Banks with gifts, including tickets to sporting events, and trips to Israel, the Dominican Republic, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
They asked Banks for only a few favors: a parking placard, a plum assignment for an associate and a promotion for Grant to deputy inspector — which he received.
Banks was not charged with a crime, but resigned in 2014, the day after federal investigators applied for wiretaps. (He cited unspecified personal and professional reasons for his departure.) Rechnitz said he was furious.
“We put so much time and energy into this entire police world,” Rechnitz said. “The NYPD, cultivating Philip Banks, and we were back to square one.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.