The feds have uncovered a trove of audio recordings that capture “dealings of questionable legality” by members of the NYPD raising the specter of more arrests in a bribery probe.
Manhattan federal prosecutors said the roughly 70,000 recordings were made by Alex “Shaya” Lichtenstein, who pleaded guilty in November to bribing cops for gun permits.
The feds described the recordings as Lichtenstein’s “contemporaneous memorialization of dealings of questionable legality with members of the NYPD.”
Sources he made the tapes to remember what was said in conversations when he was drunk.
As a result of the recordings, dozens of cops at Brooklyn’s 66th Precinct, where Lichtenstein paid for the permits, have been questioned, including former officers, sources told The Post.
The recordings also have pointed to at least one other person in a parallel case, the feds said.
“During our initial review of those recordings, we learned that some of these calls implicated at least one of the defendants in this case,” prosecutors wrote to the judge overseeing the case of NYPD Officers James Grant and Michael Harrington, who stand accused of accepting bribes from co-defendant Jeremy Reichberg and government informant Jona Rechnitz.
The feds didn’t identify which defendant was implicataed by Lichtenstein’s tapes. But Grant knew Lichtenstein, a member of the Borough Park Shomrim civilian patrol, sources said.
