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NY detective: Bar meeting led him to the underbelly of corruption

BY ROBIN TOPPING. STAFF WRITER; Staff writer Erik German contributed to this story.

Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.

He assumed the role of a contractor but wasn’t looking to build anything except a case against drug dealers.

Then Wayne Prospect came along.

Prospect, a former lawmaker and consultant, stumbled into an undercover detective’s narcotics investigation on Oct. 4, 2001, when he saw the detective and a man he knew, the detective’s target, in a Farmingdale bar.

That night, and again two weeks later, when Prospect saw the detective at another bar, prosecutors say Prospect offered to use his governmental connections to get municipal contracts for the supposed contractor he knew as “Mike.”

After further talks, it became clear, prosecutors said, the detective had a potential political corruption case on his hands.

“Once he was involved with Wayne Prospect, as with any detective, he was going to see where this goes,” said Edward Heilig, one of two prosecutors on the case against Prospect unfolding in the past month in a Riverhead courtroom.

In August 2002, the undercover officer met with Heilig and prosecutor Jeremy Scileppi and they decided to send in a second detective to pose as Mike’s uncle. The idea was that only the “uncle” would deal with Prospect. But Prospect kept calling Mike. And from then on, the game was on.

Armed with warrants to eavesdrop on Prospect and co-defendant Stephen Baranello, and equipment to secretly record his meetings with them, the undercover went to work.

The result was thousands of conversations, and videotapes of Mike handing more than $17,500 to Prospect and Baranello, a former OTB executive.

The recordings became the cornerstone of the case against the two men, who are charged with bribe-receiving and coercing a public official to provide inside information on contracts. The investigation culminated with the arrest of the two men in April 2004, with Baranello pleading guilty a month later and agreeing to testify against Prospect. He is awaiting sentencing.

During the probe, the detective had to follow certain rules.

By law, he had to give Prospect and Baranello the chance to commit a crime but not induce them to commit it.

In other words, they couldn’t be entrapped.

“The biggest obstacle to undercover work is to make sure you don’t get into the situation of entrapment, which, in the simplest terms, means when you get someone to do something they are not predisposed to do,” said Joseph Pollini, a retired New York City homicide lieutenant and undercover detective now teaching at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.

To make his case, the detective needed to get Prospect and Baranello to spell out the arrangement on the recordings.

“I want to just confirm that what we’re talking about is not a legitimate thing,” he explained to jurors this week.

While stopping short of saying his client was entrapped, Prospect’s defense attorney Christopher Cassar says the undercover “certainly keeps it going” by calling Prospect and asking him when he can get the county jobs. Cassar contends Prospect is a legitimate consultant who unknowingly got caught up in a scheme perpetuated by Mike and Baranello.

“You have the undercover, who is in the business of deception, and Stephen Baranello, who is also in the business of deception, and Wayne is the -- in the middle of it all,” Cassar said in an interview.

Trying to work his way up the chain of command, the detective repeatedly asked Prospect for access to Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, who has not been implicated in the case. When Prospect told him it was not possible, the detective asked for one of Levy’s “top lieutenants.” A day later, Oct. 31, 2003, he lunched with Prospect and Baranello, Levy’s political strategist.

Just hours after that, without Prospect’s knowledge, the detective arranged a roadside meeting with Baranello in which, unsolicited, he gave Baranello $5,000 in cash.

“I’m trying to get them apart, trying to get them to trust me. I’m trying to see how tight he is with Wayne Prospect so I can get in there ... and get more information,” the detective testified yesterday.

Heilig said the detective wanted to net whoever walked into his sting and contends Prospect and Baranello were aware they were hatching a criminal enterprise, saying, “He can’t lead them any place they hadn’t intended to go.”

Staff writer Erik German contributed to this story.

May 10, 2006