New York Post – by Kaja Whitehouse
The feds have collected months of wiretaps and as many as 30,000 e-mails in the case against a restaurant owner who was pals with high-ranking NYPD officers facing a corruption probe.
“The discovery is fairly voluminous,” Manhattan Assistant US Attorney Russell Capone said Friday at Hamlet Peralta’s arraignment in an alleged Ponzi scheme.
Peralta, who owned the now-shuttered Hudson River Café, was arrested in April over the alleged
$12 million Ponzi scheme. On Friday, he pleaded not guilty to soliciting other people’s money for a fictitious liquor-wholesale business.
The Hudson River Café served as “a clubhouse for the bosses,” including former Chief of Department Philip Banks III and Deputy Chief David Colon, both of whom have been ensnared in an FBI probe into gifts in exchange for official favors.
Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara’s office declined to comment on whether any of the evidence collected in Peralta’s Ponzi case could implicate his NYPD pals in the gifts-for-favors probe.
But prosecutors have said the failed restaurateur was so close with the cops he traveled to the Dominican Republic with “a very, very high-ranking officer for the NYPD” whom The Post has identified as Banks.
Colon, another target of the corruption probe, introduced Peralta to victims of the alleged Ponzi scheme, sources have said.
Peralta’s lawyer, César de Castro, said he plans to request a new bail package next week in hopes of springing his client, who has had trouble meeting his bail because it requires his family to come up with $1 million in cash or other assets.
“Despite press reports, there is nothing in the indictment related to corruption charges,” de Castro said. “He never intended to defraud anyone, and we will see what evidence they produce,” he added, saying that he expects most of it will be “irrelevant” to Peralta’s case.
The feds successfully argued last month that Peralta is a flight risk due to his “close connections to people in law enforcement, including people who can fix things for him.”
On Friday, Capone told Manhattan federal Judge Katherine Forrest that if Peralta seeks a lower bail package, the government will counter with a request for “a permanent order of detention.”
Judge Forrest ordered the two sides to appear before her next Thursday to debate whether Peralta should be sprung.
Peralta allegedly ran away to Georgia — where he was busted earlier this month — after realizing he was under investigation by the FBI last year. “He was fleeing. He was very much fleeing the FBI,” Capone said at his presentment in April.
“Colon, another target of the corruption probe,…”
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! RLMAO!!!!!
Does anyone else see the humor in this statement?
Hey Angel! 😀
Hotter ‘n snot here!