Ex-Brewster police officer who got sex for helping prostitution rings seeks no prison time

Wayne Peiffer was a valuable asset to a pair of Queens prostitution rings delivering women to customers in Putnam County. After all, as a Brewster police officer, he could tip them off to law enforcement activity and shield them from arrest if ever pulled over.

He never took money. He was rewarded instead with the women themselves for sexual encounters he didn't have to pay for, often in the village police station.

Now Peiffer is asking a judge to spare him incarceration for his guilty pleas last year to extortion and bribery charges. His sentencing Wednesday in Brooklyn federal court was adjourned after the judge learned Peiffer's wife had just gone into labor.

While not charged with sex trafficking like the other five defendants indicted with him in 2021, Peiffer acknowledges that his actions allowed them to operate for over a decade. He told U.S. District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall in a letter this month that the "ugly truth" was that he thought only of himself.

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"I was unable to see past my own thoughts regarding this," he wrote. "Worse, I became a contributor to exploiting these women. My conduct went against everything I was raised to believe. My conduct, and my arrest, devastated my family."

Prosecutors in Brooklyn are seeking a prison term of just over three years, the high end of the 30 to 37 months called for in sentencing guidelines. The judge must consider the guideline but is not bound by it.

They said Peiffer had the opportunity to stop the sex traffickers a decade earlier but instead "chose his own short-term satisfaction over the welfare of the public."

"He coerced the criminals into making women service him for free," the prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. "In exchange, the defendant undermined the efforts of law enforcement to stop the criminal organizations, which were able to operate with impunity."

Pfeiffer, 50, said he long dreamt of becoming an officer. He had worked for several years for a heating and air conditioning company when he learned Brewster was restarting a police department in 2006 and the new chief, a customer, asked him if he wanted to give it a try.

He generally worked 16 to 24 hours a week for the part-time department, continuing in his other job, which paid him more than $145,000 a year, prosecutors said.

Beginning in 2010, Peiffer connected with the first of the two New York City-based prostitution rings that would rely on him to operate in Putnam County, particularly on weekend nights when he worked.

The drivers would frequently bring the sex workers to Pfeiffer at police headquarters, a building attached to the public works garage at the quiet end of Main Street.

They would call ahead when bringing women to the area and Peiffer would ask what the women looked like.

"Bueno o nado Bueno?" he asked in some of the 463 texts exchanged with co-defendant Cristian Godinez between 2017 and 2020, "Good or no Good?"

Godinez's response would vary. Sometimes he told him "No tam bueno" (Not so good). On May 5, 2017, Godinez replied: “Una más umenos" (More or less) and “Esta joven” (she's young). Peiffer asked if she had "boobs."

“No mucho esta flaquita hoy pero bonita,” Godinez told him. (“Not much, she’s skinny but pretty”).

Prosecutors said Peiffer would warn the traffickers when police in the area were conducting an enforcement detail. If any of the drivers ever got pulled over by his Brewster colleagues for speeding or other violations, Peiffer would vouch for them to keep them from being arrested or ticketed.

Peiffer claimed he never knew that some of the women had been forced into prostitution through intimidation. He said they never told him they were working under duress and even went on vacations with one of them. But even though he was a police officer, why should they have confided in him, he acknowledged. He was helping the bosses in their illegal activity.

Peiffer, who has two other daughters, recently remarried.

His lawyer, Susan Kellman, asked for a sentence of home confinement and community service. She cited his multiple health conditions and his need to care for his family, including the new baby.

Peiffer suggested he could work in a home for senior citizens or shovel snow for the elderly in his community - anything to avoid separation from his family.

"You can put me on probation for life and jail me if I jay walk," he wrote. "I ask that you give me a chance to keep my loved ones from experiencing any more pain because of me."

Kellman argued that sparing him a prison term would not mean he goes unpunished, as he has lost the career he loved, damaged his professional reputation and embarrassed his family.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Ex-Brewster police officer seeks no prison time after helping sex ring