Remember Manuel "Manny" Lopez, the retired police sergeant who was charged with placing at least 21 prank phone calls to people like Rudy Giuliani and Ray Kelly while pretending to be Kelly's personal aide, a Citibank officer and a New York Post editor? Well, he's pleaded guilty to the crime and was recently sentenced to pay up $8,000 to the NYPD and do 50 hours of community service.
The $8,000 is to pay for the man hours the NYPD used tracking him down, while the community service is to make up for the four dozen counts of criminal impersonation and dozens of counts of aggravated harassment he was facing.
When Lopez made his prank calls he did so from he offices of Coastal Developments LLC, where he worked until his phone problem surfaced. He would often call NYPD employees pretending to be someone from Police Chief Michael Shea's office asking them to come by. When Lopez left the force, Shea replaced him running Ray Kelly's personal detail.
And this, children? This is why we don't make prank calls pretending to be real people with the means to track you down. Calling bars looking for Ivana Tinkle though? Classic.
