NETTED: Police Officer Nicholas Mina, accused of stealing cops’ guns, and Jennifer Sultan, a former Internet millionaire, appear in Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday for their arraignments. (Steven hirsch)
NETTED: Police Officer Nicholas Mina, accused of stealing cops’ guns, appears in Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday for their arraignments. (Steven hirsch)
Jennifer Sultan in court. (Steven hirsch)
CHARGED: Accused drug dealer Ivan Chavez (left) and suspected cohort Marcos Echeverria in court yesterday. (
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She threw it all away.
A Manhattan woman who sold her Internet company for tens of millions of dollars then blew through all her cash was reduced to pulling “large-scale drug deals” with a Queens low-life — who was himself buying guns stolen from police lockers by a painkiller-addicted cop, authorities charged yesterday.
Jennifer Sultan — who lives in a Flatiron District penthouse apartment listed for sale at more than $6 million — also tried to sell accused drug and gun dealer Ivan Chavez a .357-caliber Magnum handgun for $850, referring to it as a “toy” in text messages, prosecutors allege.
“What an idiot!” Sultan’s dad, David Sultan, fumed to The Post after her Manhattan Supreme Court arraignment yesterday with Chavez, 24, and accused NYPD gun thief Police Officer Nicholas Mina, 31.
“She had a great life, and she just f–ked it up,” David Sultan said, adding the charges against his 38-year-old daughter came as a “total, total, total shock.”
“I don’t know what the hell she’s doing,” he said.
In 2000, Jennifer and her live-in boyfriend, Adam Cohen, had sold their Web streaming-media company Live On Line for a reported $70 million and spent $400,000 that summer renting a Hamptons house.
But her dad said, “They’re now penniless.”
The couple — who live in a 10-room, four-bedroom penthouse on East 17th Street with a private elevator and a roof deck — have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Manhattan federal court.
They were recently held in contempt for repeatedly misleading judges, in one instance falsely claiming to be married.
The couple, who one lawyer said “live lavishly,” are staggering under debt that includes millions of dollars in mortgages and an annual $84,000 property-tax bill.
Prosecutors said cops found at least 60,000 pain pills that Sultan had sold in Chavez’s Woodhaven apartment when they raided it on Thursday.
They also found $61,000 in counterfeit cash, a ballistics vest that had been stolen from the locker room in Mina’s Ninth Precinct, a TEC-9 machine pistol, a sawed-off shotgun, two other guns and equipment for defacing gun serial numbers, prosecutors said.
Chavez is “a prolific and daily drug dealer” of heroin, oxycodone and other prescription drugs, as well as at least 10 guns, Assistant District Attorney Chris Prevost said.
Mina allegedly stole four of those guns, which belonged to other cops, from a locker room in the precinct he was assigned to guard, Prevost said.
Sources said his past carnival work earned him the nickname “Carny” at the station house.
Sources said one of those guns belong to Officer Paul Jurgens, who with Mina received a community award for apprehending an East Village burglar in 2010.
The four-year NYPD cop and Queens resident Mina also sold Chavez a Glock pistol Mina had bought but not yet registered with the NYPD, prosecutors said.
Sources said Mina has a serious addiction to painkillers such as oxycodone.
He has “confessed to the crimes, blaming it on his drug use and his debts to his drug dealer, Mr. Chavez,” Prevost said.
Mina and the rest of the defendants were busted after the guns that he allegedly sold Chavez ended up being sold to undercover cops, Prevost said.
Despite the guns’ serial numbers being defaced, cops were able to trace them to the Ninth Precinct — and allegedly caught Mina on wiretaps talking about future gun sales.
“It was immediately recognized as so important to ferret out the gun dealer in their midst, who was wearing an NYPD uniform,” Prevost said.
“It shocks the conscience that the . . . undercovers had to put their lives in danger in order to stop another officer from putting guns out of on the street,” Prevost said.
As the prosecutor laid out the allegations against him, the slightly built Mina sat slumped in court at the defense table in a baggy white T-shirt, his hair mussed.
Sources said that when he was busted Thursday, Mina went into such a frenzy that he was forced to undergo a psychiatric screening.
A source said he was “not surprised at all” about the arrest of Mina, who he said was widely disliked in the precinct.
Sultan was snared after investigators heard her on recorded phone calls with Chavez discussing deals to both buy and sell drugs.
The petite Sultan, her long brown hair pulled into a ponytail, slouched as Prevost described her “explicit, almost daily” phone conversations with Chavez about drug deals, the prosecutor said.
“She acts as some sort of supplier for Mr. Chavez in various large-scale drug deals she arranged for him for their mutual benefit so she could supply her own drug business with pills and drugs,” Prevost said.
Sultan allegedly text-messaged Chavez offering a “.357 mag for 850” — a .357 Magnum pistol for $850, the indictment alleges. The duo also referred to guns in messages as “toys,” court papers allege.
Sultan was arrested at gunpoint Thursday night, according to her dad, David, who said he showed up at her plush apartment to find cops “ransacking” it, telling him they were looking “for anything and everything incriminating.”
Also arrested Thursday was Meryl Liebowitz, a 64-year-old woman who lives below Chavez — and who allegedly was “a daily runner for Mr. Chavez’s drug business and a runner for the gun business as well,” Prevost said in court.
All the defendants were ordered held without bail, except for Sultan, who was ordered held in lieu of $150,000 bond, or $45,000 cash bail.
Additional reporting by Bob Fredericks, Jeane MacIntosh and Aaron Feis