Former Head of Police Sergeants Union Sentenced to 2 Years for Fraud

Hours after the searches, Mr. Mullins resigned.

A month later, department officials found that he had misused social media in a series of posts in which he made public a police report involving the daughter of Bill de Blasio, then the mayor, and referred to Dr. Oxiris Barbot, who was health commissioner, and Representative Ritchie Torres, a former City Council member, using vulgar names. Officials imposed a roughly $32,000 fine for violating department rules.

Mr. Mullins retired on the same day, a tumultuous end to his 40-year career.

In February 2022, federal prosecutors charged him with wire fraud. They said Mr. Mullins had submitted hundreds of false expense reports to the union treasurer seeking repayment for purchases he made with his personal credit card.

He would then deposit the union checks into his bank account, and use those funds to pay his credit card bills, pay a relative’s college tuition and buy high-end jewelry and clothing, including from Hermes and Tiffany and Co. He also expensed $3,000 worth of meals at a Greenwich Village restaurant that was unrelated to his union work, federal prosecutors said.

Mr. Mullins “publicly vowed to protect the interests of the thousands of active and retired sergeants that he represented,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.

“But behind the scenes, Mullins stole from the S.B.A. and its members, treating the S.B.A. as his personal piggy bank,” he added. “Mullins disgraced his uniform, broke the law, and undermined the public’s trust in law enforcement. As today’s sentence demonstrates, no one — not even high-ranking union bosses — is above the law.”