A now-former NYPD officer from Oceanside pleaded guilty Friday to obstructing a grand jury investigation into her alleged plot to hire a hit man to kill her estranged husband and the teenage daughter of her boyfriend.
Valerie Cincinelli, 36, pleaded guilty to a single count of obstruction of justice, with federal prosecutors recommending a sentence of 60 months in prison although she could get a lesser penalty.
As part of the plea deal, the government agreed to drop two murder-for-hire charges, which would carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.
“I know that what I did was wrong and I’m truly sorry for it,” Cincinelli told U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert.
Cincinelli, an NYPD officer for 12 years before her indictment and subsequent resignation, was suspended without pay after her arrest in 2019. She had worked in the 106th Precinct in Queens, but had been on modified assignment without a gun since 2017 because of domestic incidents, an NYPD spokesman has said.
In her modified assignment, Cincinelli had been working in the Viper unit, which monitors surveillance cameras in public housing projects, an NYPD spokesman has said.
Prosecutors have alleged Cincinelli was driven by greed. Cinncinelli, according to prosecutors, didn’t want to share her pension with the estranged husband and thought her boyfriend was lavishing too much money and spending too much time with his daughter, instead of with her. The boyfriend eventually cooperated with authorities, officials said.
Prosecutors have said Cincinelli had a “volatile” relationship with both the husband and the boyfriend.
Cincinelli, who was arrested in May 2019, was denied bail and has been held in a Brooklyn jail.
But the judge on Friday indicated that she would consider a bail application for Cincinelli’s release, something a prosecutor said the government would oppose.
Cincinelli broke down crying during the proceeding at one point when the judge asked how long she had been in federal custody.
“For two years, I haven’t seen my son,” Cincinelli told the judge.
