A crooked Rikers guard offered to break into the system computers and advance the release dates of no fewer than five inmates — demanding to be paid in cocaine or cash, according to shocking testimony in a Manhattan bribery trial.
“The officer said he preferred drugs because he could make more money with drugs,” inmate Rafael Montadoca told jurors of disgraced correction officer Robert Whitfield today.
Montadoca and three other inmates eventually got cold feet and backed out of the bribes, prosecutors say. But a fifth inmate, convicted heroin dealer Julio Bello, told jurors yesterday that he cooperated with investigators and wore a bugged wristwatch to record the guard making him a coke-for-freedom offer in a Rikers kitchen.
Cops would arrest Whitfield, 50, of Queens, in 2011 after he allegedly showed up for the handoff of three kilos of cocaine, worth $100,000, at a McDonalds on Dykeman Street and Broadway in Inwood.
But in their first recorded conversation, Whitfiield asked for a cash downpayment, Bello testified.
“If you want I give you twenty thousand dollars,” Bello tells Whitfield a tape from March, 2011, played for jurors yesterday.
“Mmm-hmm,” the taciturn Whitfield answers.
“By in two days,” adds Bello.
“Ok,” Whitfield agrees.
“By Monday, twenty thousand dollars,” Bello repeats of the down payment.
When Whitfield asks, “You sure?” Bello answers, “Positive.”
At another point in the tape, Whitfield claims to Bello that another inmate is going to pay him $500,000 for an early release — but that he told the inmate, “No, no, you pay 250.”
Turns out Bello may well get his early release after all. He’s facing 15 to 25 years for heroin sales, but could be spurn in just 4 and a half years under his cooperation agreement with the office of Bridget Brennan, the city’s special narcotics prosecutor.
Bello is due to be cross examined today by defense lawyer Andres Manuel Aranda.