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Monday, July 29, 2013

Brooklyn DA prosecutor isn’t fired after calling hookers from DA office phone

MARK POSNER

A married Brooklyn prosecutor shamelessly called hookers from his office phone — and was caught after another assistant district attorney recognized his number while probing a call-girl service, sources told The Post.

Politically connected rackets prosecutor Mark Posner, 37, was then quietly transferred to a much lower-profile post, two law-enforcement sources said.

The sources questioned why Posner — the son of the now-deceased Charles Posner, a former judge and top aide to Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes — would risk his job with such antics.

He was exposed when another rackets prosecutor noticed his office number as she examined a prostitution service’s phone records during a routine investigation in 2009, sources said.
  
“People were saying, ‘Why would he call from the office phone?’ ” a law-enforcement source said. “If it was his cellphone, the likelihood that it would have been noticed is infinitesimal.”

But the sources said it’s clear why he wasn’t canned.

“He’s Charlie’s kid, first of all,” a source said.

In addition to being a former judge, Posner’s dad was an Orthodox Jew who served as a liaison between Hynes and that politically influential group — and Hynes is now locked in a tough election battle, the source noted.

“They don’t want to anger the [Orthodox] community by firing Charlie’s kid,” the source said.

After Posner got caught, he was transferred from the hard-charging rackets bureau to the much less prestigious early case-assessment bureau, which screens all Brooklyn arrests and directs the cases to the correct bureau.

An investigation was never made into whether Posner ever broke any laws. DA officials declined to say why.

“As soon as we learned of this conduct by ADA Mark Posner, District Attorney Charles Hynes immediately suspended him for 10 days without pay, ordered him to seek counseling and transferred him to ECAB,” said DA spokesman Jerry Schmetterer.

Asked why Posner was transferred instead of fired, Schmetterer declined to comment.

The rackets prosecutor who discovered Posner’s calls was Lauren Hersh, the former head of the DA’s sex-trafficking unit who herself resigned last year after a sensational rape case unraveled on her watch, a law-enforcement source said. Hersh declined to comment for this story.

Posner did not respond to multiple e-mails and voicemails.


By JOSH SAULNY POST

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