Former NYPD Union President Charged With Stealing Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars of Members’ Dues

Ed Mullins, the former head of the New York Police Department’s Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA), has been charged with defrauding his own union of hundreds of thousands of dollars, which he spent on expensive meals, luxury items, and even a relative’s college tuition.

Mullins, 60, a controversial figure with a reputation for excusing terrible behavior from the police and publicly lamenting about the decriminalization of marijuana, resigned in October following an FBI raid on the SBA office and Mullins’ home. He had been the president of the union for 20 years. At that time, sources told the New York Post that Mullins was being investigated for possibly misappropriating union funds.

On Wednesday, the Department of Justice revealed that was indeed the case. According to the complaint filed by U.S. Attorney Damian Williams with the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York, Mullins for the past five years was allegedly “submitting false and inflated expense reports to the SBA, seeking reimbursement for those bills as legitimate SBA expenditures when in fact they were not.” From that, he managed to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars that his union members—including 13,000 fellow officers, both active and retired—had paid in dues.

According to the complaint, the fraud all started when the vice president retired in 2017. The treasurer took responsibility for approving Mullins’ expense reports and reportedly didn’t bother to scrutinize the