LI Prison Guard, Others Charged With Smuggling Drugs To Inmates

Two Long Islanders are among 21 people who were charged today for attempting to bribe guards and smuggle drugs into Rikers Island prison, according to the US Attorney.

According to US Attorney Richard Donoghue, those charged include six corrections officers, inmates in the jail and accomplices outside. Three people charged remain at large, officials said.

“The corruption of correction officers presents a security risk to the entire jail population, and a potential danger to the residents of our communities,” Donoghue said. “We will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute those who place their personal enrichment over the public duties they have sworn to perform.”

According to Donoghue, since early 2019, the FBI and the New York City Department of Investigation (DOI) were investigating contraband rings that involved paying bribes to prison guards in exchange for transporting marijuana, the narcotic Suboxone, synthetic marijuana and an unauthorized smart phone into the George R. Vierno Center and the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Rikers Island.

According to Donoghue, the drugs were smuggled into the prison with the help of corrections officers Darrington James, Patrick Legerme, Aldrin Livingston, Michael Murray, Angel Rodriguez and Christopher Walker. Rodriguez, 23, is a resident of Bellport.

Prisoners James Albert, Clarence Brooks, Kyle Charles, John Mohammed and Christopher Rivas, who were in jail for unrelated offenses, arranged for marijuana and other contraband to be packaged and secretly delivered to the correction officers by Celena Burgess, Veronica Jagdeo, Jorcetta King, Aboudou Krigger, Jonathan Medina, Styles Shephard and Tony West, Donoghue said.

Jagdeo, 24, lives in Freeport.

The prison guards received thousands of dollars in bribes to smuggle the drugs in, Donoghue said.

As a part of their investigations, law enforcement officers reviewed financial records related to online money transfer tools, such as CashApp, conducted surveillance and reviewed recorded telephone calls made by defendants who used coded language in their conversations. For example, on Feb. 19, 2019, an inmate at the Vierno facility called a co- conspirator to discuss supplying the inmate and Albert with marijuana: “I’m trying to get, um four ‘Oakland Raider jerseys’ [code for marijuana]. “...’Got Pink Panties’ [code for correction officer] on the line right now, you heard? Gangsta. You just gotta make it to the ‘Jungle’ [code for Brooklyn] to drop it off to them and, more or less, we lit from there.”

In recorded telephone calls between Rivas and a co-conspirator in October 2019, Donoghue said that Rivas requested a "joint" [code for a cell phone] with the Facetime application. In a subsequent telephone conversation, Rivas asked West whether the joint is a Size 5 or Size 6 [code for iPhone 5 or iPhone 6], and West replied that it was a Size 6, referring to an iPhone 6 that was delivered to the Vierno facility the previous night, according to prosecutors.

On Oct. 25, 2019, a DOC Special Search Team seized an iPhone 6 and an iPhone charger from Rivas’s laundry bag and 12 clear plastic bags containing marijuana from his person, according to Donoghue.

"Contraband smuggling enterprises have long plagued City jail facilities," said DOI Commissioner Margaret Garnett. "The arrests today are another example of a pattern in which inmates and outside conspirators identify correction officers vulnerable to corruption, and use them to carry drugs and other illegal substances into the jail. These schemes threaten the safety of fellow officers and other inmates, and undermine order and discipline in the City’s jails."