NYPD Vice Cop Pleads Guilty To Helping Run Prostitution Ring

QUEENS, NY — A Brooklyn police officer pleaded guilty in Queens Supreme Court on Wednesday to charges that he assisted a prostitution and gambling enterprise, prosecutors announced.

Now-suspended Brooklyn South Vice Detective Rene Samaniego, 44, pleaded guilty to attempted enterprise corruption charges for alerting the brothels' boss to scheduled police raids and identifying undercover cops from 2016 to 2018, according to the charges.

The crime ring included eight brothels in Queens, Brooklyn and Hempstead, Long Island, that raked in over $2 million in 13 months, according to prosecutors.

The gambling operations included illegal lotteries in a Springfield Boulevard deli, and another ran out of a hair salon on 243rd Street, both in Queens.

"Sadly, there are some who possess the badge and tarnish it," Queens Acting District Attorney John M. Ryan said in a statement. "The defendant in this case used his position as a member of New York’s Finest to help run an illegal operation in three counties to line his pockets with easy cash."

The NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau began investigating the crime ring in 2015 after receiving an anonymous tip that some active and retired police officers were participating in a crime ring.

Samaniego is due back in court on June 25, 2019. He will likely receive a sentence of two to six years in prison, prosecutors said.