A former Brooklyn district attorney is facing federal charges stemming from her alleged illegal wiretapping of a love interest and a fellow prosecutor.
The Justice Department on Monday announced the indictment of Tara Lenich, a former supervisory Assistant District Attorney with the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, on two counts of illegal interception of communications.
Ms. Lenich’s own former colleagues brought state charges against her late last year over the wiretapping, which was said to span back to at least June 2015.
While the federal indictment does not detail any potential motive in the case, local authorities previously described the case as a love triangle gone wrong.
According to the New York Post, Ms. Lenich was accused of tapping the phone of New York Police Department Detective Jarrett Lemieux, with whom she claimed to have had a romantic relationship. The two had worked together in the past on a lengthy gun-running investigation.
Ms. Lenich also tapped the phone of fellow prosecutor Stephanie Rosenfeld-Vais, whom she suspected had been romantically involved with Detective Lemieux, the Post reported.
Ms. Lenich is accused of forging the signatures of multiple New York judges to create false paperwork appearing to authorize the interception of the pair’s cell phone communications, according to the federal indictment.
She then listened in on their conversations and later falsified search warrants to obtain text messages sent from and received by the phones.
