BY Scott Shifrel and Tracy Connor DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER  Originally Published:Tuesday, October 25th 2011, 9:32 AM Updated: Tuesday, October 25th 2011, 12:40 PM  Five NYPD cops were busted in a sting operation for smuggling illegal guns and what they thought were stolen slot machines, cigarettes and counterfeit goods, the feds said Tuesday.  A criminal complaint details an audacious scheme by a cabal of officers at Brooklyn's 68th Precinct - and some retired buddies and civilian pals - to betray their badges for dirty money.  The allegedly corrupt cops were snared by a confidential informant on the FBI payroll - and caught on tape talking about their misdeeds.  "I'm getting a good army set up here," Officer William Masso bragged to the informant about his growing crew.  Prosecutors say Masso was the ringleader and met the informant in late 2009 when he was looking for someone who would "fix" traffic tickets.  Soon, the complaint says, Masso was offering to do a lot more than make a few summonses disappear.  By early 2010, Masso and the informant, an undocumented immigrant, were talking about selling contraband including illegal cigarettes, court papers say.  The cop said he had done it before - raking in $5,000 a week by selling cigarettes with fake tax stamps he got from an American Indian reservation.  "It was good money. I needed it at the time," he told the informant, according to a secretly recorded conversation.  He fantasized about connecting with the person who made the tax stamps.  "If I can get the f---ing stickers, do you know how much money you'll make with that?" Masso allegedly said.  In the ensuing months, Masso enlisted fellow 68th Precinct cops Eddie Goris, and John Mahoney, Brooklyn South Task Force officer Ali Oklu and 71st Precinct cop Gary Ortiz in a number of criminal schemes, authorities said.  Retired 68th Precinct cops Joseph Trischitta, Marco Venezia, and Richard Melnik, and former Sanitation cop Anthony Santiago were also involved, the feds charged.  A New Jersey corrections officer, David Kanwisher, and two of Santiago's Jersey pals, Michael Gee and Eric Gomer, were also recruited, the complaint says.  The informant and undercover agents working with him hired various members of the team to transport slot machines that the cops believed had been stolen on the way to a casino.  They took a cache of guns, including M-16 rifles and handguns that had their serial numbers defaced, across state lines.  Some of them even used a bolt cutter to break into tractor-trailers filled with cigarettes, which they then drove from Virginia to New York.  Masso told the informant he could supply protection for his criminal partners.  "I have good guy, bad guy...whatever he wants we get," he was caught saying on one recording.  "One guy seven foot tall with muscles out to here - we get him. You want a guy who beat the s--- out of somebody who bothers him. We got that. We got cops with vests and guns."  On other tapes, Masso complains that his crew - who pocketed more than $163,000 for their work - were not being paid enough.  "They're risking a lot for a little," he said on one recording.  And in another exchange, Masso talked about how he was warned to be careful when he was running his own smokes-smuggling operation.  "They said, 'Be careful, you get caught, you're f---ed,'" he recalled.
Five New York City police officers have been arrested in connection with a gun-smuggling sting operation, according to The Associated Press.