Monday, 18 Nov 2024

A Jail Guard Smuggled In Contraband for a Turkish Gold Trader. Now He’s Going to Prison Himself.

Reza Zarrab was a well-connected Turkish-Iranian gold trader known for throwing money around with abandon, paying tens of millions of dollars in bribes to Turkish officials.

When he was arrested in 2016 and jailed at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, an ultrasecure federal lockup in Manhattan, one of the guards, Victor Casado, 36, of the Bronx, saw an opportunity and offered his services.

Over a year, he smuggling in alcohol, cellphones and vitamin C packets, among other things, for Mr. Zarrab in exchange for at least $50,000 in bribes, the authorities said.

Mr. Casado was eventually arrested and pleaded guilty to federal bribery charges last summer. On Friday, Mr. Casado, a former New York City police officer who was forced to resign after he committed perjury in court, stood before a federal judge and was sentenced to three years in prison and three years supervised release.

“This crime is really an assault against an institution — really, our entire system of justice,” the judge, Richard J. Sullivan, said. Mr. Casado’s actions, he said, cast a shadow on the federal justice system. “There’s a presumption among people that the federal courts are incorruptible,” Judge Sullivan said. “You can’t bribe your way through your time at the M.C.C.”

Prosecutors said Mr. Casado was paid off by Mr. Zarrab’s associates, including, on one occasion, a female Turkish lawyer with whom the guard communicated through the encrypted messaging service WhatsApp. The government has not named the attorney.

Before he was sentenced, Mr. Casado expressed remorse for his actions and asked for leniency. “This is not who I grew up planning to be,” he said. “I don’t have a worthy excuse for my actions. I wish I could go back in time and make different decisions.”

Mr. Zarrab, whose prosecution drew sharp criticism from Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has pleaded guilty to violating United States sanctions against Iran and is cooperating with American authorities. Although Mr. Zarrab is in federal custody, he has not been sentenced.

Mr. Casado’s attorney, Florian Miedel, outlined in court papers the damage Mr. Casado had already done to his life. To pay his legal bills and the court-ordered forfeiture, Mr. Casado sold his Bronx condominium and currently sleeps “on a mattress on the living room floor of his mother’s one-bedroom apartment.”

On Friday, several of Mr. Casado’s friends and family attended the hearing in the ninth-floor courtroom. During the proceedings, his fiancée blinked back tears, while other supporters of Mr. Casado looked on solemnly.

Mr. Casado agreed as part of his plea to forfeit $26,500, the amount in bribes that the government was able to document.

Mr. Casado’s lawyers submitted letters vouching for his character and outlining the struggles he faced while growing up in the crime-ridden Hamilton Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, and his work as a youth counselor for the Board of Education.

But federal prosecutors introduced an unusually detailed account of the end of his career as a police officer, noting he was investigated by the Internal Affairs Bureau and found to have lied under oath before a grand jury. He resigned, prosecutors wrote, “in lieu of being indicted.”

The police confirmed that Mr. Casado joined the force in January 2007, and resigned in May 2008.

The bribery case involving Mr. Casado and Mr. Zarrab is not isolated. In August, another guard at the jail, Dario Quirumbay, was arrested and charged by federal prosecutors with smuggling two iPhones and alcohol to inmates in exchange for about $1,200 in bribes. Mr. Quirumbay’s case is still pending.

Mr. Casado was ordered to surrender to a federal corrections facility on Feb. 26. In court, he asked to be incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Conn., in order to be close to his young son.

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