SDNY COURTHOUSE, April 26 – When Robert Espinel who pled guilty in the NYPD gun license scandal appeared for sentencing on April 26, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York courtroom of Judge Edgardo Ramos was full of Espinel supporters, some of whom cried.
Espinel spoke, but much shorted than his co-defendant Paul Dean who received an 18 month sentence from Judge Ramos back in January. Espinel did however mention both Nine Eleven and super storm Sandy.
Judge Ramos praised Espinel for attending his daughters' sports events - something he said he wished he'd made time to do - but called Espinel's betrayal of his position "confounding" before imposing a sentence of a year and a day, followed by two years of supervised release.
Here's from the US Attorney's January press release (for some reason the Office did not publicize Friday's Espinel sentencing) -- "Robert Espinel was a member of the NYPD from 1995 through his retirement in 2016, and was assigned to the License Division from 2011 through 2016. From at least 2013 through 2016, multiple NYPD officers in the License Division serving under DEAN’s command, including David Villanueva and Richard Ochetal, solicited and accepted bribes from gun license expediters – including Frank Soohoo, Alex Lichtenstein, a/k/a “Shaya,” and co-defendant Gaetano Valastro, a former NYPD detective – in exchange for providing assistance to the expediters’ clients in obtaining gun licenses quickly and often with little to no diligence. In 2015 DEAN and Espinel decided to retire and go into the expediting business themselves. In order to ensure the success of their business, DEAN and Espinel planned to bribe Villanueva and Ochetal, who were still in the License Division, to enable their clients to get special treatment. They also agreed with Valastro to run their expediting and bribery scheme out of Valastro’s gun store. According to the plan, Valastro would benefit from the scheme because DEAN and Espinel would steer successful applicants to Valastro’s store to buy guns. They also tried to corner the expediting market by forcing other expediters to work through them. Specifically, DEAN and Espinel attempted to coerce Frank Soohoo, another gun license expediter, into sharing his expediting clients with them by threatening to use their influence in the License Division to shut down Soohoo’s expediting business if Soohoo refused to work with, and make payments to, DEAN and Espinel. "
As if in a parallel universe, Roberto Sanchez pled guilty to narcotics offensed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Pennsylvania in 2017 and was to appeared to sentenced, with a mandatory five year minimum.
Then he disappeared.
On April 24 he reappeared in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York arraignments courtroom, presided over by this week by retiring Magistrate Judge Henry Pitman. Unlike most here, including Michael Avenatti, he was not asking for a free lawyer. His retained counsel Angelo Antonio Castro III told Judge Pitman that Sanchez is supporting three children in The Bronx and had never, in reality, fled.
Judge Pitman said that one can as surely flee in a metropolitan area as to Timbuktu, and that in any event, remand to the MCC was mandatory.
But Sanchez' lawyer simply would not give up, insisted first that the Pennsylvania plea was been based on coersion - Judge Pitman said the warrant was valid on its face - then finally asking that under Rule 20 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure the delayed sentencing now be moved to the SDNY. Chaos ensued.
Judge Pitman to his credit - we say this in light of yesterday's reporting - did not dismiss this Hail Mary out of hand, saying it was a case of firs impression. The AUSA said there was no consent; Judge Pitman replied that neither Office has been asked. Finally reference was made to "Part I" as an appellate remedy, something about which Inner City Press the only media in the courtroom asked about on the way out. Watch this site, and @SDNYLIVE.
