Ex-NYPD lieutenant from LI pleads guilty in gun license permit scheme

A former NYPD lieutenant from Long Island pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday to participating in a bribery scheme involving gun licenses, prosecutors said.

Paul Dean, 45, of Wantagh, an ex-official in the gun license division, was charged last year with taking payoffs from so-called expediters to give favored treatment to applicants, and then retiring to use his contacts and become an expediter himself because it was so lucrative.

He pleaded guilty Wednesday to one count of conspiring to pay bribes, but did not admit to taking bribes. At sentencing he will face up to 5 years in prison, with advisory federal sentencing guidelines calling for 18 to 24 months according to his plea agreement.

Dean’s lawyer, Abe George, declined to comment on the plea.

The charges against Dean in April 2017 were part of a series of cases involving schemes that prosecutors at the time said had led to more than 100 gun licenses being improperly granted at the NYPD, and reflected a “cottage industry of parasitic profiteers." 

Prosecutors alleged at the time that Dean and  another cop had taken payoffs ranging from prostitution services to liquor and car repairs in return for help expediting licenses. 

The cops, the government said, eventually concluded that expediters were charging clients so much and making so much money that they retired in January 2016, and become expediters themselves.

Dean’s sentencing was scheduled for Nov. 15.