A federal judge sentenced a disgraced former Brooklyn prosecutor who pleaded guilty to wiretapping her love interest and a fellow prosecutor to a year and one day in prison on Friday.
The once star assistant district attorney of 15 years, Tara Lenich, 42, sniffled in Brooklyn’s federal court as she addressed the judge.
“Your Honor, I have a hard time believing I’m even in your courtroom as a criminal defendant,” Lenich said with a shaky voice. “I lost the very thing I was trying to protect, my career, which was my life.”
The former supervisor in the violent criminal enterprises bureau copped to two counts of illegal wiretapping in April 2017, seven days after being charged. Specifically, for nearly 18 months between June 2015 and Nov. 2016, she cut out judges’ signatures from previous documents and made fraudulent wiretap approvals to spy on her then NYPD detective boyfriend and fellow prosecutor she thought was involved with him.
After the total 25 wiretaps, which expired every 30 days, were brought to light from an internal investigation, the targeted assistant district attorney resigned and the now-disbarred Lenich was fired.
Lenich added in court that she “truly imploded” and dug herself “deeper and deeper into the hole.”
Faced with a recommendation of two years’ prison time from federal prosecutors and home detention from the defense, Judge William Kuntz had his own message.
“You can’t take your power in hand to peak,” Kuntz told Lenich. “You know how important this system is. You know it’s crucial.”
Despite defense arguments that Lenich admitted her crimes immediately and has since delved into the world of community service with no prior criminal history, Kuntz said Lenich must be held responsible for her crimes.
He added that he’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the courtroom who wasn’t at one time curious of what their love interests were doing.
In addition to the wiretaps, Lenich previously admitted to giving false grand jury subpoenas to phone providers to see who her victims were speaking with. She also repeatedly lied to colleagues in the district attorney’s office, saying she was working on a confidential investigation at the time and they couldn’t listen in.
Her victim in the office has since filed a lawsuit against her saying the events ruined her career and compromised her privacy indefinitely.
“[I will] never know what information, what pictures, what messages and phone conversations [the defendant] has uploaded to the cloud for use at a later time,” the victim said, according to court documents. “To me this crime is ongoing and will always be ongoing because as long as [the defendant] is at liberty I sit and wait for the other shoe to drop, for the next attack.”
Lenich must surrender to prison on March 14. The judge had said he would recommend a prison of her choosing, which would likely be outside New York for her safety.
