Feds bust former NYC Correction officer in Rikers jail weed smuggle plot

A former city correction officer who allegedly took roughly $6,000 in bribes to bring marijuana into a Rikers Island jail was charged Friday by Brooklyn federal prosecutors.

Karin Robinson, 29, is accused by a grand jury of receiving the ill-gotten cash via an app between February and June 2019 and then smuggling contraband weed into the George R. Vierno Center, the feds said.

She brought the weed to detainee James Albert so that he could sell it to other detainees, the feds allege.

Albert sold the drugs he got from Robinson and a second former officer, Patrick Legerme, to hundreds of other detainees, documents show.

Karin Robinson, in the right picture taken from in surveillance footage, is accused of smuggling contraband weed into the George R. Vierno Center at Rikers Island.  She then brought it to detainee James Albert, in the left-hand picture, who allegedly sold the weed to other detainees.

“The corruption of correction officers undermines the orderly running of the institution and endangers the safety of other incarcerated individuals and Department of Correction personnel,” said Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.

The charges stemmed from a months-long probe by the city Department of Investigation of alleged smuggling in the Vierno Center, the feds said.

Security camera footage showed Robinson handing packages to Albert and other detainees. In a recorded call, the feds caught Albert and Robinson talking about the scheme. Investigators clandestinely followed Robinson to at least one meet.

Robinson was paid over Cash App by Albert’s wife, records show.

Confronted with the evidence, Robinson admitted the wife’s complicity and later resigned from Department of Correction when disciplinary charges were filed.

Albert was convicted by a Brooklyn federal jury Dec. 1 on charges of bribing correction officers.

During the trial, Andrew Walker, a Department of Correction investigator assigned to the Investigation Department, testified that Robinson was often assigned to posts that gave her greater freedom. She also took posts that would allow other officers to break for lunch, escort inmates around the jails, or watch them during recreation or other programs.

Walker also said contraband “usually” came in via officers or civilian staff.

Karin Robinson was accused of receiving the ill-gotten cash over a cash app between February and June, 2019 and then smuggling contraband weed into the George R. Vierno Center.

During the same trial, former correction officer Patrick Legerme, who also smuggled contraband for Albert , testified he too was paid electronically and met with Albert’s drug supplier in the street in Brooklyn.

Legerme said he would hide the drugs under his gym tights and sneak them through Correction Department security.

“If there’s no metal on you, it wouldn’t ring and you would walk right through. If it did ring, they would pat you down,” Legerme testified in November.

Robinson also accepted packages from visitors, evidence shows. Those packages were supposed to be checked for contraband, but Robinson was slip them past those checks and deliver them to Albert.

At at least one point, Robinson drove her gray Jeep, decorated with a law enforcement flag, to Brooklyn to meet an associate of Albert to pick up the marijuana, court records show.

Albert was found guilty for the scheme at his trial. At sentencing, he faces a possible 15 years in prison.

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