Former NYPD Cop From LI Pleads Guilty In Gun License Scheme

A former NYPD officer from Long Island pleaded guilty last week to his part in a scheme to bribe police officers for gun licenses.

Paul Dean, 44, of Wantagh, pleaded guilty on Aug. 16 to conspiracy to commit bribery. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 15. The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. He was arrested in April 2017.

“Paul Dean betrayed his duty as a former leader within the New York City Police Department to protect and serve the public," said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman. "Instead of assuring the integrity of the License Division he oversaw – a division charged with protecting the public safety by restricting access to firearms – he sought to corrupt it by bribing the very officers once under his command.”

Dean was a member of the NYPD from 1994 through 2016, and was assigned to the License Division from 2008 through 2016. Espinel was part of the NYPD from 1995 to his retirement in 2016, and served in the License Division from 2011 to his retirement. As a lieutenant, Dean was one of the highest-ranking members of the License Division and, from approximately November 2014 through November 2015, regularly ran the day-to-day operations of the division.

According to prosecutors, from at least 2013 through 2016, Dean and his co-conspirators solicited and accepted bribes from gun license expediters in exchange for providing assistance to the expediters' clients in obtaining gun licenses quickly and often with little to no diligence. They allegedly obtained bribes from at least three expediters.

Prosecutors say that the bribes included cash payments, paid vacations, food and liquor, the services of prostitutes, and free guns, among other things. In exchange, licenses were approved, expedited and upgraded for clients. They allegedly did this by not interviewing the applicants and failing to investigate the business-based need for applicants to carry guns. They allegedly approved licenses for individuals with substantial criminal histories, including arrests and convictions for crimes involving weapons or violence, and for individuals with histories of domestic violence.

According to prosecutors, in 2015, upset with the fact that the expediters were making thousands per license while they were doing all the work, Dean and another officer decided to retire and go into the expediting business. Prosecutors say they planned to bribe officers in the License Division to make sure their customers go special treatment. They also tried to threaten their competition, prosecutors say. They allegedly tried to coerce another expediter to share his client list by threatening to use their influence in the License Division to shut down his business if he didn't work with and make payments to them.

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