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Ex-Police Officer Is Sentenced in Gun-Running Scheme



Saying that a former New York police officer had breached the public’s trust in a scheme to transport firearms and stolen merchandise, a federal judge sentenced him on Friday to nearly five years in prison.

“The offenses are indisputably serious, without any hint of justification,” the judge, John G. Koeltl, said as the former officer, William Masso, 48, closed his eyes and clutched a rosary.

A few minutes before Judge Koeltl, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, imposed the sentence of 57 months, the minimum suggested by guidelines, Mr. Masso addressed the court.

“I don’t know how to express how much I really am sorry,” he said, pausing to wipe away tears. “My actions have disgraced me, my family and my friends, and especially the New York City Police Department, who I consider family.”

Mr. Masso, who had been a police officer for more than 18 years, worked at the 68th Precinct in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, before he was dismissed in February after pleading guilty to four conspiracy counts. Prosecutors said he was the ringleader of the scheme.

His lawyer, Ronald Fischetti, told Judge Koeltl that Mr. Masso’s previous contributions as an officer should be weighed in his favor. He said that Mr. Masso, whom he called “destitute” and “a broken man,” had volunteered to work amid the smoking rubble of the World Trade Center shortly after it was destroyed, and helped another officer as she recuperated from serious injuries she suffered in a police-car crash. He also asked the judge to consider the fact that his client had been ensnared in a sting.

“There are no victims,” he said. “There was no violence.”

A prosecutor for the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan countered that “the defendant took an oath to uphold the law and protect the public.”

“He undermined the public trust in every police officer out on the street,” the prosecutor, Carrie H. Cohen, said.

Mr. Masso was charged in the fall in an indictment that accused a dozen men of transporting cigarettes, slot machines and guns across state lines. Five of the defendants, including Mr. Masso, were active-duty police officers working in Brooklyn. Two others were New York police officers when the investigation began but left the force before it ended. Other defendants included a retired New York City police officer, a member of the New York City Sanitation Department Police and a correction officer in New Jersey.

Prosecutors said that Mr. Masso organized and led the group, even recruiting an officer he was training in his precinct, and instructed members to carry their badges while moving items they thought were stolen.

The investigation began in 2009, a complaint said, when an informer working for federal authorities told Mr. Masso that he was looking for someone to help him fix tickets. Mr. Masso eventually made agreements with the informer and an undercover federal agent posing as the informer’s boss to transport the cigarettes and other items.

Last July, the complaint said, Mr. Masso and others went to a hotel in Manhattan, where they sold a customized shotgun to the undercover agent for $2,000.

The most serious charges involved events in September, when, the complaint said, Mr. Masso and others picked up 20 firearms packed in a suitcase and a duffel bag from a warehouse in New Jersey. The complaint said that Mr. Masso drove the weapons, which included three M-16 rifles, a shotgun and 16 pistols, most with obliterated serial numbers, to a warehouse on Long Island.

While transporting the weapons, prosecutors said, Mr. Masso displayed his police jacket, with the letters “NYPD” visible, in the window of his vehicle.