A crew of Westchester County jail employees, including current and former corrections officers, were arraigned on bribery charges in long-running smuggling scams, prosecutors said Thursday.
Two jail guards, a former corrections officer and two jailhouse commissary workers are charged with pocketing thousands of dollars in recent years to sneak marijuana and other contraband to inmates, Westchester County District Attorney Mimi Rocah said in a press release.
“These defendants put their own interests above the safety of incarcerated individuals, employees, civilians and other corrections officers,” Rocah said in a statement. “Our jails become less safe when correction officers and others in positions of public trust accept bribes to smuggle in contraband.”
The Post first reported on the bribery scheme earlier this month.
According to new details released by prosecutors, the scam dated to late 2021, with inmates’ pals greasing the jail workers’ palms with hefty payoffs to sneak banned items to prisoners behind bars.
Investigators reviewed hours of visiting room surveillance footage and examined dozens of texts and phone conversations between the workers and the prisoner’s associates, according to the DA’s office.
“Tell Litle Cuzzo I’mma push her a extra 150 on top of what I just did for this next one,” an inmate told a friend on the outside about alleged payments to commissary worker Sadari Hold in a Jan. 2, 2022 call.
“Alright,” the friend said. “So I’m about to give her that right now and I’mma call her and let her know.”
According to prosecutors, Holt allegedly received a $150 wire transfer later that day.
Holt, 30, who worked for the company contracted to provide food services as the Valhalla jail, is accused of collecting about $1,500 in total between December 2021 and April 2022.
The DA said Holt’s security clearance was revoked on April 4, 2022 as the investigation began.
Another commissary contractor, Shardae Moore, 35, is charged with collecting $500 to sneak in the contraband in December 2023 and had her clearance revoked later that month.
Meanwhile, corrections officers Peter Cumberbatch, 39, and Shakia Smythe, 32, are awaiting termination proceedings after jail investigators and prosecutors completed their probe.
Cumberbatch is accused of collecting $800 in March 2023 to sneak in banned items, while Smythe is charged with more than $500 in bribes between June and August 2022.
The fifth suspect, former corrections officer WIlfredo Gonzaque, 36, allegedly took more than $2,000 in payoffs between September 2022 and February 2023 and was fired on Feb. 7, 2023.
According to prosecutors, all five were charged with various counts of bribe-receiving and promoting prison contraband and released without bail after their arraignments this week.
None of the charges are eligible for bail under the state’s criminal justice reform measures.
“The involved correction officers have disgraced the shield that they once wore and violated the trust we put in them to uphold the law and work with integrity,” Westchester County Correction Commissioner Joseph Spano said in a statement Thursday.