Two NYPD detectives allege in a bombshell lawsuit filed Saturday that they have become modern-day Serpicos, investigating police corruption at the highest levels only to be retaliated against by their own department — and even mocked with images of rats at their desk.
Detective William Seidman, 42, and his partner, Detective Anthony Vidot, 57, were assigned to the city’s Department of Investigation in 2021 to root out corruption and bribery involving NYPD and city officials, their lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court claims.
One investigation involved allegations that clubs in Midtown and Queens were paying cops and their associates for special treatment, like not issuing fines for noise complaints and ignoring other violations, sources have said.
Seidman and Vidot were asked to run numbers from phones that had been confiscated from NYPD officers and city officials in a series of September 2024 raids.
“We had the case in its infancy,” Seidman told The Post in an exclusive interview. “One of the first names that popped for us was James Caban.”
James Caban was the twin brother of then-Police Commissioner Edward Caban.
Soon other big names surfaced, including mayoral advisor Timothy Pearson and then-Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Philip Banks, the lawsuit claims.
The two gumshoes went to higher-ups at DOI with their shocking discoveries.
“When this comes out . . . you’re going to have worlds collapsing,” Seidman said he told DOI boss Audrey Feldman. “It’s going to take the police department down.”
The detectives kept the DOI case close to the vest but frequently felt their NYPD bosses were fishing for information to get ahead of the probe that was about to ensnare top NYPD brass and Mayor Adams’ closest advisers, they alleged in court papers.
It became clear that Sgt. Vincent Deynes, their direct NYPD supervisor at DOI, was trying to get information to report back to their commander, then-Deputy Inspector Raymond Festino.
Festino is one of five NYPD bosses named in the lawsuit and was in charge of a dozen detectives, including Seidman and Vidot, at DOI, the suit alleges.
“That’s when it switched,” Seidman recalled in an exclusive sitdown with The Post. “They want us off this case.”
That’s also when the intimidation tactics began in earnest.
The gumshoes would show up to work at DOI’s Maiden Lane offices in Lower Manhattan and find photos of rats hung near their desks with their confidential license plate numbers written next to the rodent picture, the suit alleges.
“Send Rats Packing!” the sanitation advisory message declared.
Around this time, the U.S. Attorney’s Office joined the mushrooming corruption case and the detectives were warned by federal prosecutors to not share information with other cops since “DOI is not sure who is compromised,” they claimed in the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, abuse from their own bosses began to fester.
In September 2022, the two partners attended a line-of-duty funeral at the request of a squad commander. Festino was allegedly outraged that they had skipped a going-away party for a civilian team member.
He phoned Vidot, a U.S. Marine who was shot in the line of duty as a cop in 2003, to berate him, the suit claims.
“You think you can do whatever you want? You motherf—ers,” Festino allegedly shouted. “I will f—king kill you! I will kick your f—ing ass!”
Festino had an ugly history of hateful remarks, the detectives claim.
Once, while Seidman, who is Jewish, was helping to decorate the office Christmas tree, Festino walked in the room and allegedly said, “Look at the Jew doing the Christmas tree.”
The detectives filed an internal Equal Employment Opportunity complaint, claiming discrimination and a hostile work environment, the suit alleged.
As the corruption case expanded Festino became more controlling, allegedly telling them that whatever work they did moving forward would be for “him and only him,” they claimed.
The detectives were also told that they had to check in “every two hours while they were in the field,” and needed “special permission to work overtime, costing them thousands,” the suit claims.
The detectives were worried and shared their fears with one of the DOI investigators”I’m telling you right now the retaliation is going to be through the roof,” Seidman said he told DOI. “When this comes out, I’m done. And I called it.”
In 2023, both detectives were taken off the corruption case and transferred to other units, first to the Real Time Crime center at police headquarters and then the city’s Office of Emergency Management in Brooklyn.
The new assignment stuck Seidman, who has four kids, with a two-hour commute, an NYPD retaliation tactic known as “highway therapy.”
Vidot decided to retire and now drives a school bus part time.
“It’s been rough,” Vidot said. “I feel bad that I left and Will’s still there. But I couldn’t take it anymore. The way they were coming after me I said ‘I better leave while I can.’”
Seidman — a 17-year veteran of the force — has been languishing at a city shelter in the East Village as an OEM security officer, and was recently told he is being transferred to the subways.
There have been no criminal charges in the case the pair was investigating. But Philip Banks and Pearson both resigned amid the federal investigation.
The probe is one of many swirling around Mayor Adams’ troubled administration, which saw multiple raids, subpoenas and resignations this year and last.
The city Department of Education was served with a subpoena as part of a federal probe into outgoing Schools Chancellor David Banks and his brother Terence Banks, a consultant who represented companies that scored lucrative contracts with the city, a source told The Post. Both are brothers of Philip Banks.
Adams was named in a five-count criminal indictment in September 2024 alleging he took bribes from Turkish interests in exchange for official favors. He has pleaded not guilty and maintained his innocence, pushing hard against claims this week that he was set to step down.
