(Reuters) -The former head of one of New York City’s police unions was sentenced to two years in federal prison on Thursday on a fraud charge in which prosecutors accused him of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the association.
U.S. District Court Judge John Koeltl handed down the sentence to Ed Mullins, who was president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA) from 2002 to 2021, during a hearing in a Manhattan courtroom.
In January, Mullins pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and agreed to forfeit $600,000 to the U.S. government and pay $600,000 back to the union.
“Although I regret everything that has led me to this day, I remain motivated to make this right, to correct my flaws and to restore to all those who I’ve injured,” the New York Daily News quoted Mullins as saying during Thursday’s hearing.
Between 2017 until he resigned as union chief in October 2021, Mullins used a personal credit card to dine at expensive restaurants and shop at luxury stores, prosecutors said. Mullins then submitted to the union false and inflated expense reports for reimbursement, prosecutors said.
In all, Mullins stole at least $600,000 from SBA, according to prosecutors.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, the chief federal prosecutor in Manhattan, said in a statement after the sentence that “Mullins stole from the SBA and its members, treating the SBA as his personal piggy bank.”
“In doing so, Mullins disgraced his uniform, broke the law, and undermined the public’s trust in law enforcement,” the statement said.
Koeltl also sentenced Mullins to three years of supervised release after he has served his sentence.
The SBA, headquartered in lower Manhattan, is the fifth-largest police union in the United States. The union’s 13,000 members are active and retired New York Police Department.
(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Additional reporting by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Sandra Maler and Gerry Doyle)
