Edward D. Mullins, the explosive ex-leader of the New York City sergeants’ union who pleaded guilty to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the organization and its members, was sentenced on Thursday to two years in federal prison.

Mr. Mullins, who served for nearly two decades as president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association — the country’s fifth-largest police union — pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in January for pocketing $600,000 of union money. Mr. Mullins had inflated his business expenses over four years, prosecutors said, and spent that money to cover other costs like luxury goods, extravagant meals and personal items.

In addition to his prison term, Mr. Mullins, 61, of Port Washington, N.Y., was sentenced to three years of supervised release. He was ordered to make $600,000 restitution to the union, and to forfeit $600,000.

On Thursday, Judge John G. Koeltl said Mr. Mullins had planned “an elaborate scheme” to defraud union members and “abused his position of trust.” That, the judge said, “was not an aberration.”

“The tragedy of the sentence is certainly caused by the defendant’s actions,” he added.

Before he was sentenced, Mr. Mullins told the court that his relationship with his family is fractured, and that he is “a shell of the man he used to be.”

“Life has completely crashed around me, and given me much time to think,” he continued.

“The worst sentence of all is to commit me to a house of mirrors,” he said.

Mr. Mullins must surrender to the Federal Bureau of Prisons by Nov. 10.

The sweeping investigation into Mr. Mullins’s financial dealings and the ensuing scandal reverberated throughout the New York Police Department and the city’s five police unions, among them the Sergeants Benevolent Association, which represents 13,000 members.

Mr. Mullins’s downfall was the most dramatic of any local union leader since that of Norman Seabrook, who headed the city correction officers’ union. In 2018, he was convicted of steering $20 million from its coffers into high-risk investments in exchange for a kickback of at least $100,000.

Federal prosecutors first signaled their case against Mr. Mullins on Oct. 5, 2021, when investigators raided his home in Port Washington on Long Island and the union headquarters in Manhattan. They seized cellphones, iPads, financial documents and about two dozen hard drives, among other items, according to court records.

Hours after the searches, Mr. Mullins resigned.

A month later, department officials found that he had misused social media in a series of posts in which he made public a police report involving the daughter of Bill de Blasio, then the mayor, and referred to Dr. Oxiris Barbot, who was health commissioner, and Representative Ritchie Torres, a former City Council member, using vulgar names. Officials imposed a roughly $32,000 fine for violating department rules.

Mr. Mullins retired on the same day, a tumultuous end to his 40-year career.

In February 2022, federal prosecutors charged him with wire fraud. They said Mr. Mullins had submitted hundreds of false expense reports to the union treasurer seeking repayment for purchases he made with his personal credit card.

He would then deposit the union checks into his bank account, and use those funds to pay his credit card bills, pay a relative’s college tuition and buy high-end jewelry and clothing, including from Hermes and Tiffany and Co. He also expensed $3,000 worth of meals at a Greenwich Village restaurant that was unrelated to his union work, federal prosecutors said.

Mr. Mullins “publicly vowed to protect the interests of the thousands of active and retired sergeants that he represented,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.

“But behind the scenes, Mullins stole from the S.B.A. and its members, treating the S.B.A. as his personal piggy bank,” he added. “Mullins disgraced his uniform, broke the law, and undermined the public’s trust in law enforcement. As today’s sentence demonstrates, no one — not even high-ranking union bosses — is above the law.”

Chelsia Rose Marcius covers breaking news and criminal justice for the Metro desk, with a focus on the New York City Police Department. More about Chelsia Rose Marcius

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