Police accused of stealing drugs and money

NEW YORK - Investigators found more than $700,000 in the storage locker of a former police detective at the heart of a widening corruption scandal, according to court papers made public Wednesday.\nThe detective and his former partner were charged with selling cocaine that law enforcement officials said they stole from drug dealers and resold through confidential informants.\nThe cash and drug allegations are detailed in a federal indictment charging former Detectives Thomas Rachko and Julio Vasquez with money laundering, narcotics conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, lying to federal agents and using firearms in the drug conspiracy.\nVasquez and Rachko were drug investigators in Manhattan in the late 1990s before Rachko retired and Vasquez was assigned to the police department's firearms investigation unit.\nThey were arrested in November and charged with interrupting a money laundering stakeout by arresting a drug money courier and taking his backpack full of money.\nSince then they have begun cooperating with federal prosecutors, law enforcement officials said, and have described a long pattern of stealing drugs and drug money from dealers.\nThey have implicated two fellow detectives and a retired lieutenant, officials said, in what is considered the gravest corruption scandal to hit the police department since the early '90s, when dozens of officers in a Harlem precinct were accused of beating and robbing dealers and reselling their drugs on the street.\nThe indictment charges Rachko and Vasquez with conspiracy to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine.\nRachko's lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, said he could not confirm that his client had been providing information and said Rachko had no formal cooperation agreement with the government.\n"I'm hopeful that we'll reach a fair resolution," he said.\nVasquez's attorney did not return a phone call seeking comment.