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NYPD Officer Arrested After Trying to Have Hitman Hired to Kill Ex and Child: Prosecutors

Officer Valerie Cincinelli had already been on modified duty since 2017

What to Know

  • An NYPD officer was arrested after she tried to have a hitman hired to kill her ex-husband as well as a child, prosecutors say.
  • Valerie Cincinelli appeared in federal court Friday where she was ordered held without bail
  • A source familiar with the investigation tells NBC 4 New York the child was her current boyfriend's 14-year-old daughter

An NYPD officer was arrested after she tried to have a hitman hired to kill her ex-husband as well as a child, prosecutors say.

Valerie Cincinelli, 34, tried to get her current boyfriend to hire a hitman, a police official told NBC 4 New York. Cincinelli was arrested Friday by the FBI following a sting operation. NYPD Internal Affairs assisted in her arrest.

A source familiar with the investigation tells NBC 4 New York the child was her current boyfriend's 14-year-old daughter. 

The officer's father spoke out late Friday night, defending his daughter saying he doesn't believe she did it.

"I haven't seen anything, and until I do I really shouldn't be saying anything," Lou Cincinelli said at his Long Island home. "But I guarentee you my daughter is innocent of this."

The officer previously worked out of the 106th Precinct in Queens, before being placed on modified duty in 2017 for an unrelated domestic incident, the police official said.

Before that though, she was an award-winning officer, including a "cop of the month" award from the Jamaica Rotary in June 2017.

Cincinelli, who joined the NYPD in 2007, was most recently in a unit known as VIPER that monitored security cameras.

Cincinelli was ordered held without bail at hearing federal court on Central Islip Friday afternoon. NBC 4 New York reached out to her lawyer who had no comment.

According to a complaint filed against Cincinelli by federal prosecutors, she made a cash withdrawal on or about Feb. 18 of $7,000 from a bank to give to a cooperating source, identified to NBC 4 New York as her current boyfriend, who would in turn give it to the hitman. 

On or about May 8, the complaint says, Cincinelli told her boyfriend "to have the hitman kill Jan Doe over the weekend and then wait a week or a month to kill John Doe."

A review of the boyfriend's cell phone and text messages between the him and Cincinelli confirms that they communicated using cell phones multiple times between about February 2019 and the present in furtherance of this murder-for-hire plot, some of which calls and texts were made to or from Oceanside, New York, according to the complaint.

At about 10:10 a.m. Friday, at the direction of FBI agents, Cincinelli was notified in person by a Suffolk County Police Department detective at her home, that her estranged husband had been murdered, according to a detention memo filed by prosecutors. The boyfriend was present with Cincinelli at the time of the notification, outfitted with a recording device at the direction of law enforcement, the memo says. After the detective left the home, Cincinelli allegedly began to discuss her alibi.

Then, at approximately 10:48 a.m., an FBI agent, posing as the hitman, sent a text message to the boyfriend, which included a photograph of the alleged crime scene in which Cincinelli's estranged husband appeared dead in his car, and a demand for an additional $3,000 to kill Jane Doe, the memo said. In response, Cincinelli allegedly instructed her boyfriend to delete the text messages and photographs, citing her fear that law enforcement could subpoena the phone.

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