Rikers Island Staffers, Contractor and Detainee Sentenced for Smuggling
On March 10, 2025, the last of four former Rikers Island Jail staffers was sentenced to federal prison for her role in a massive smuggling scheme at the New York City lockup. The group, including three guards and a program counselor, were nabbed along with a former contractor and a detainee, after a trove of contraband was found in May 2024.
The haul of contraband included cellphones, ceramic blades, tobacco, marijuana and cocaine, as well as oxycodone, fentanyl-soaked papers and “K2” and “K3” synthetic cannabinoids. Calling it “better stocked than a trap house,” City Department of Correction (DOC) then-Deputy Commissioner Serena Townsend said it was “hard to believe these items would not get flagged through the mail” and “far more likely” that staff smuggled it in, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Oct. 2024, p.14.]
The most recent sentence was handed to former guard Stephanie Davila, 31, after she pleaded guilty to passing contraband and bribe payments to her co-conspirators from July to August 2021. In addition to a federal prison term of 12 months and a day, she was ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay a $100 special assessment. See: United States v. Davila, USDC (S.D.N.Y.), Case No. 1:24-cr-00467.
Before that, on January 17, 2025, fellow former guard Chantal de los Santos, 31, was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison, plus three years of supervised release, and ordered to surrender $21,600 in bribes that she admitted taking from co-conspirators to whom she muled contraband from March to June 2022. In addition, she was ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay a $100 special assessment. See: United States v. de los Santos, USDC (S.D.N.Y.), Case No. 1:24-cr-00508.
Former program counselor Shanequa Washington, 40, was sentenced on November 14, 2024, to 12 months and a day in federal prison, after she admitted to smuggling contraband into the Robert N. Davoren Center from March to April 2022. She was also ordered to surrender $13,000 in cash bribes, plus pay a $100 special assessment and serve three years of supervised release. See: United States v. Washington, USDC (S.D.N.Y.), Case No. 1:24-cr-00334.
On September 24, 2024, Kenneth Webster, 43, was sentenced to 40 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, after he pleaded guilty to smuggling contraband between May and September 2022 in exchange for bribes totaling $64,475. A former detainee at the jail who was then employed by an unnamed jail contractor, Webster was ordered to surrender that amount in cash, pay a $100 special assessment and serve three years of supervised release. See: United States v. Webster, USDC (S.D.N.Y.), Case No. 1:24-cr-00345.
The former detainee, Kristopher Francisco, 29, was sentenced to 37 months in federal prison on August 26, 2024, after he pleaded guilty to passing bribe payments to Davila while incarcerated at Anna M. Kross Center from July to August 2021. He was ordered to surrender $40,000 in cash and pay a $100 special assessment, plus serve three years of supervised release; that won’t begin until the end of a state prison term he is serving at Sing Sing Correctional Facility for the 2019 robbery and murder of Charles Reynoso in Harlem. Based on Francisco’s earliest release date from that sentence, his new one won’t begin before December 2036.
The first of the group to be sentenced was former guard Jason Skeet, 47, on June 18, 2024. He got a 37-month federal prison term, after he admitted to smuggling contraband into the Northern Infirmary Command where he worked approximately 100 times, taking bribes in exchange totaling $45,644. He was ordered to surrender that amount in cash, plus pay a $100 special assessment. Skeet must also serve three years of supervised release. See: United States v. Skeet, USDC (S.D.N.Y.), Case No. 1:23-cr-00632.
As a digital subscriber to Prison Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.
Already a subscriber? Login