Former Prosecutor Forges Warrants to Wiretap Romance of Colleague Prosecutor and Police Detective, Sentenced to Jail (Law)
A federal court judge in Brooklyn sentenced a jealous former prosecutor to one year in prison after she pled guilty to forging documents that allowed illegal wiretaps on a fellow prosecutor and a New York City police detective.
Former prosecutor Tara Lenich, 42, who had worked for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office since 2005, pleaded guilty last year to two counts of illegal interception of communications, a class D felony.
U.S. District Judge William Kuntz II alluded to several of William Shakespeare’s plays when he sentenced Lenich. “The protagonist driven by a fatal and tragic flaw causes a tragedy,” Kuntz said.
Spurned by a lover, Lenich forged judges’ signatures by cutting them from legitimate documents and taping them to wiretap orders, which she sent to cell phone providers. Lenich used the forged orders to monitor the calls and text messages of fellow prosecutor Stephanie Rosenfeld and her former lover, New York Detective Jarrett Lemieux for six months during 2016.
Lenich, who choked back tears during her sentencing, said she had developed romantic relations with the detective that came to a sudden end with the detective became romantically involved with Rosenfeld. “I don’t know how listening to those calls was ever going to help in the twisted situation I was in,” Lenich told the judge.
Lenich was disbarred as a result of her conviction and her attorney asked the judge for a sentence of eight months of house arrest and community service. Prosecutors asked for a 24-month prison sentence because Lenich lied to her subordinates and her illegal wiretapping activity required the DA’s Office to review hundreds of cases Lenich was involved in
