Prosecutors say Wayne Peiffer, a police officer in Brewster, N.Y., had women from sex-trafficking and prostitution rings brought to him at the police station.
In December 2017, Wayne Peiffer, a police officer in Brewster, N.Y., received a text message from a Queens man who prosecutors say worked as a driver for a prostitution ring. For months, the man — identified in court documents as Cristian Noe Godinez — had been driving women to the Putnam County village, near the Connecticut border, to perform sex acts on Officer Peiffer, prosecutors said.
“Today I have a skinny one,” Mr. Godinez wrote to the officer, who followed up with a vulgar question about her other physical attributes. In hundreds of text messages over four years, Officer Peiffer expressed a preference for “big” girls, who sometimes were delivered to him at the police station.
On Tuesday, Officer Peiffer, 48, was among five people arrested on federal charges related to a sex-trafficking ring and a prostitution network that prosecutors say operated out of Queens and across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Prosecutors said that in exchange for the sexual acts, provided at no cost, Officer Peiffer shielded the organizations from law enforcement scrutiny, including tipping off the group to law enforcement operations.
Appearing Tuesday afternoon by video conference in federal court in Brooklyn, Officer Peiffer pleaded not guilty to nine counts including bribery, extortion and use of an interstate facility to promote prostitution. He was released to home detention on a $300,000 bond.
In an indictment unsealed Tuesday, prosecutors described a sex-trafficking organization, based in Queens, that since at least 2004 had used “force, threats of force, fraud and coercion” to bring young women and minor girls from Mexico to the United States. Prosecutors said the organization’s drivers transported women and girls from Queens across the region to prostitution clients.
Luz Elvira Cardona, Roberto Cesar Cid Dominguez, Blanca Hernandez Morales and Jose Facundo Zarate Morales — all related by blood or common-law marriage, prosecutors said — were arrested in Queens on Tuesday and charged in connection with the sex-trafficking organization.
According to a detention memo filed by prosecutors Tuesday, evidence against the four includes witness testimony, including from victims, as well as phone evidence, police reports, surveillance and wire transfer records.
They face counts including sex trafficking of minors, transportation of a minor and conspiracy to use an interstate facility to promote prostitution. Mr. Cid Dominguez was also charged with a bribery count in connection with Officer Peiffer.
Prosecutors also described a prostitution business, also based in Queens, that since 2017 had drivers take women up to Brewster. Mr. Godinez, identified in the indictment as a driver for the business, was also charged but was not arrested and is considered a fugitive, prosecutors said.
According to an April complaint against Mr. Godinez, made public as part of the charges Tuesday, F.B.I. and other law enforcement agents approached Mr. Godinez in March as part of a five-year investigation into sex-trafficking activities based in Queens. According to the complaint, Mr. Godinez admitted to driving women for prostitution work in Brewster and handed over his phone, which had hundreds of contacts for prospective clients.
Officer Peiffer was charged in connection with both the sex-trafficking operation and the prostitution business; he was not accused of sex trafficking.
Officer Peiffer has been a police officer in the Village of Brewster since at least 2006, prosecutors said in court filings.
The village’s mayor, James Schoenig, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A man who answered the phone at the Brewster Police Department said the police chief, John Del Gardo, was unavailable to comment.
Earlier in the day, Chief Del Gardo told The Journal News that Officer Peiffer — who, like Brewster’s other officers, works part time — had been suspended indefinitely. (A court-appointed lawyer for Officer Peiffer said at his arraignment that he also worked full time for an air-conditioning company.)
The chief told The Journal News that he had learned of Officer Pfeiffer’s arrest around 7 a.m. Tuesday.
“I was really surprised,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. He was just a normal officer, came into work and did his job and went home.”
Brewster, a village of 2,400 people a little more than an hour north of New York City, has been the subject of sex-trafficking investigations before.
In February, The Journal News reported, a Queens man was charged with being a driver for a prostitution ring, a case also brought by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn. When he was arrested, according to prosecutors, the man had contact information for 383 Brewster clients in his cellphone.
It is not clear if that man — who pleaded guilty in July to one count of promotion of prostitution, court records show — was connected to the charges announced Tuesday, which include two unnamed co-conspirators recruited as drivers for the sex-trafficking organization.
Since around 2010, prosecutors said, Officer Peiffer directed members of the sex-trafficking organization and, later, the prostitution business to deliver women to him. According to the indictment, Mr. Cid Dominguez recruited two drivers to take women to Officer Peiffer for sexual services, for which Mr. Cid Dominguez paid.
Beginning in around April 2017, Mr. Godinez began driving women from the prostitution ring to Officer Peiffer, including to the Brewster police station, prosecutors said. In their detention filing Tuesday, prosecutors included excerpts from text messages between the two men, in which they discussed the women Mr. Godinez could provide the officer.
In July 2018, responding to a greeting from Officer Peiffer, Mr. Godinez wrote, “a good one.”
“Big?” Officer Peiffer asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Godinez wrote.
“Good,” Officer Peiffer replied. “Are you stopping at the station?”
Ed Shanahan contributed reporting.
