Speaking to CBS News, sources in the NYPD have confirmed that the two officers working security for the crypto investors who held hostage and tortured their business partner in a townhouse for over two weeks had not gotten prior authorization for the Department for their outside employment. Detectives Roberto Cordero and Raymond J. Low have since been moved to desk duty while the NYPD investigates the matter. Cordero picked up the victim, an Italian named Michael Valentino Teofrasto Carturan, and brought him to the townhouse on May 6th. It is unclear if he and Low were present when the violence against Carturan was taking place.
Cordero had been assigned to the security detail for Mayor Eric Adams, who told reporters that the police determine who gets that job, and drew a distinction between what these officers did off-duty and their job performance. “I have security personnel and we don’t know what they do in their private lives. It has nothing to do with their professional capacity to make sure that I’m safe while I move around the city,” the mayor said.
While officers are allowed to seek secondary employment so long as they comply with regulations laid out by the Conflict of Interest Board as well as the NYPD, numerous instances of cops moonlighting in activities that flout these rules have accumulated over the years. In 2016, four officers, including a deputy Inspector and a Deputy Chief, were charged in a federal “cops on call” corruption case, for accepting expensive gifts, free travel, and prostitutes in exchange for police escorts, undue access into the NYPD, and gun licenses from two Brooklyn businessmen. At one point, the officers closed a lane of traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel to ensure swift passage for their client, an Israeli billionaire named Lev Leviev.
In a more recent case, Business Insider reported in 2023 that NYPD detective Stephen Giaco was running a private security firm from the precinct where he worked, managing the unsanctioned side hustle on the city’s time and availing himself of Department resources for over two decades. In the “cops on call” case, it was unclear whether other officers knew about the malfeasance, but Insider’s report found that Giaco’s sprawling business was an open secret in his midtown precinct, and the officer who blew the whistle on it faced retaliation from colleagues.
The investigations against Detectives Cordero and Low follow other recent stories of crypto investors corrupting local law enforcement to their own ends. In January, a crypto investor named Adam Iza (who went by the nickname, “The Godfather”) and LA Sheriff’s Department Detective Eric Chase Saavedra pleaded guilty to federal charges on tax crimes and violating Iza’s business rivals’ civil rights with illegal search warrants, intimidation, and extortion.
In a statement released to CBS News, the mayor’s office stated that they are “disturbed” by the allegations against Cordero and Low, and that the investigation is ongoing.
