A former high-ranking NYPD official from Yonkers has been charged in a pair of bribery schemes, including one in which he and a Florida CEO allegedly conspired to get the businessman a contract to put his company’s digital panic buttons into city schools.
Kevin Taylor and Geno Roefaro, the CEO of SaferWatch, were arrested Thursday, Feb. 12, on an indcitment charging them with bribery and other offenses. Taylor pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court and Geno Roefaro made a court appearance in the Southern District of Florida, where bond was set and he agreed to appear in New York for an arraignment on March 6..
The second alleged scheme accuses Taylor of soliciting $75,000 from two employees of a body-armor company to help the business keep its NYPD contract.
“The NYPD is the greatest police force in the world, including because it invests wisely and honestly in resources,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a news release announcing the indictment. “The NYPD procurement process is not for sale.”
The alleged schemes began after Taylor, a then 27-year veteran of the department, was promoted in 2023 to Inspector and assigned as commanding officer of the School Safety Division.
In early 2023, SaferWatch had a modest contract for a pilot program providing its panic-button application to four NYC high schools.
On two occasions in August 2023, according to the indictment, Roefaro withdrew money from banks in New York City – a total of $35,000 – and gave the money to Taylor in Yonkers. In between the two payments, Taylor wrote a memo to a deputy police commissioner overseeing the school safety division urging the department to spend $11 million on SaferWatch products.
The following month, an official supervised by Taylor issued a $19,830 no-bid purchase order for SaferWatch to provide a tipline in the SSD command center.
In early October, Roefaro allegedly paid for a vacation trip to Las Vegas for Taylor and a romantic partner, spending more than $10,000 to cover airfare, a luxury hotel stay, a helicopter tour and meals, including a visit to a medieval-themed dinner theater.
Two weeks after returning from the trip, Taylor testified before two City Council committees urging the expansion of the tipline pilot program.
Days after that he and a romantic partner traveled to the Bahamas, with Roefaro picking up the tab for the airfare and a pair of meals, one at an expensive steakhouse. In November 2023, Roefaro allegedly paid Taylor another $35,000.
But Roefaro began complaining about the returns on his investment. While their communication was generally done on the Signal encrypted messaging service with texts set to delete after several hours, they also sometimes saved screenshots on their phones. Law enforcement was able to obtain those through search warrants.
In one Roefaro allegedly told Taylor he had gotten nothing for the hundreds of thousands of dollars he’d spent.
Taylor’s response, according to the indictment, was : “You got nothing from me??” and later “You can’t play with the big boys and piss like a puppy.”
Still he kept going to bat for Roefaro, sending a memo to the police commissioner…
By the end of 2023, Roefaro was insisting on some good news, including the announcement and launch of an expanded contract by mid January 2024.
“If not. I’m (expletive),” he allegedly texted. “And you don’t want me to be (expletive). I’m both your whore and your sugar daddy all in one.”
While it appeared a press conference was going to happen, Roefaro paid for spa services and meals at upscale restaurants for Taylor and a romantic partner on another trip to the Bahamas. The press conference – or expanded contract – never materialized and Taylor was reassigned in February 2024.
An article in The City newspaper in September 2024 detailed Saferwatch’s lobbying efforts to get the administration of Mayor Eric Adams to support an expanded contract for the company. That included hiring a firm owned by Terence Banks that would lobby his brothers, schools chancellor David Banks and Philip Banks, the deputy mayor for public safety.
Taylor was only mentioned peripherally in the article which cited his testimony to the City Council committees. But Taylor sent a link to the article to the woman he traveled with that year to the Bahamas and expressed concern that Roefaro could incriminate him.
Richard Langone, Taylor’s lawyer, called the allegations “specious” and a result of the collapsed federal prosecution against Adams. “I truly, truly believe this man is going to be exonerated,” he said in a phone interview, adding that “(federal prosecutors) couldn’t take down Adams” so they are going after anyone they can get. He suggested that Taylor never did anything to “inhibit” the contracting process.
The allegations related to the second scheme are that from the Spring of 2023 until early 2024 Taylor repeatedly solicited money from two employees of a body-armor company that was awarded a nearly $2.8 million contract to provide ballistic vests to officers in the school-safety division.
He urged them repeatedly to provide a contribution to a holiday party he was throwing for the school-safety division and for which he was on the hook for more than $125,000. The employees never paid him or made the the contribution even though they were continuously worried that Taylor could disrupt their ability to complete the contract by holding up fittings of officers to determine vest sizes.
Taylor, 52, and Roefaro, 39, of Pompano Beach, Fla. are charged with honest services wire fraud, bribery and conspiracy to commit those crimes. Taylor is additionally charged with extortion under the color of official right. Each faces up to 20 years in prison.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Ex-NYPD official from Yonkers facing fed charges in bribery schemes
Reporting by Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
