Crooked Bronx NYPD officer was narcotics kingpin’s rent-a-cop for over 15 years: feds

A crooked Bronx transit cop was on a drug kingpin’s payroll over a span of 15 years — raking in tens of thousands in bribes to move cocaine by the kilo, a bombshell new federal indictment claims.

Andrew Nguyen, 41, also scanned NYPD records for information on the narcotics honcho’s competitors, removed drugs from the dealer’s stash house and orchestrated a phony traffic stop and drug “seizure” to help the dealer dodge a $245,000 debt to one of his suppliers, court papers say.

The corrupt officer teamed up with the “leader of a drug trafficking enterprise” shortly after being hired to patrol subways in Transit District 12 in the East Bronx in 2008, the feds allege. He’d struck up a friendship with the dealer, who sold heroin, cocaine and marijuana, two years earlier.

In October 2008, the drug trafficker, who the indictment doesn’t name, was busted for selling heroin to an undercover police officer. Soon afterward, Nguyen went to the dealer’s stash house and removed heroin and a firearm from the premises so that police would not find them, court papers claim.

Nguyen reached back out to the kingpin again in 2020, asking if he had any work in the drug business available for some “quick cash,” the indictment alleges.

The trafficker soon had Nguyen moonlighting as a drug mule, transporting more than eight kilos of cocaine while bearing NYPD “credentials” that he “planned to use to evade arrest” in the event that a legitimate cop pulled him over, court papers say.

A gun-toting Nguyen also drove the drug trafficker to meetings between 2020 and 2023, pocketing between $1,000 and $2,000 per trip, the indictment alleges.

The dirty officer also charged $1,000 to search the NYPD database for information on the trafficker’s competitors, the feds say. Nguyen even offered to arrest a drug dealer who owed the drug boss money in exchange for $20,000, but both men decided not to go through with the plan, court papers say.

In January 2021, Nguyen conducted perhaps his most stunning alleged crooked plot — taking $10,000 to stage a car stop in which he pretended to seize the dealer’s drugs in order to con an out-of-state marijuana supplier that the dealer owed $245,000.

Nguyen told the dealer where he’d be pulling him over, and then “pretended to arrest” him while the supplier listened on a video call, court papers say. Nguyen then allegedly released the dealer after driving him a few blocks.

Nguyen was fired from the force in December 2023 but for a separate misdeed — stealing a pair of children’s Nikes that a coworker stashed in the precinct property room, NYPD records show. He’d been making an annual salary of more than $100,000 at the time.

The feds caught Nguyen on camera during a December 2023 sting transporting five kilos of what he believed was cocaine in exchange for $5,000 from the dealer, court papers show. It was unclear Wednesday why he was only arrested on Tuesday, nearly two years later.

Nguyen pleaded not guilty at his first appearance in Manhattan federal court Tuesday to wire fraud, bribery and conspiracy charges that carry a possible decades-long prison sentence.

A judge set bond at $400,000 bond, and he’s due back in court on November 24.