A Woodbridge bail bondsman who pleaded guilty to bribing police officers may be eligible for a reduced prison sentence after he cooperated with federal authorities in a corruption probe into the bail bond industry, the New Haven Register reported yesterday.

Citing an unnamed source “familiar with the situation,” the Register reported that Philip Jacobs, of Jacobs Bail Bonds of New Haven, wore a “transmitter or recording device” and incited incriminating conversation that led to the arrests of a judicial marshal and a clerk in the public defender’s office.

As a result, Jacobs may be able to secure a 5K motion — an agreement that reduces the severity of an individual’s sentence when he or she has assisted in an investigation or the prosecution of another person.

Jacobs — along with father Robert Jacobs and brother Paul Jacobs, who operates a separate bail bond company — each confessed to having made thousands of dollars in payments to New Haven Police Department Lt. William White.

The men paid White to have NHPD officers apprehend people who “failed to appear for cases in which the JACOBS had posted a bond and therefore stood to suffer financially,” according to a U.S. Department of Justice press release from October.

On Oct. 26, White pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bribery and two counts of theft of government funds after an FBI probe into the NHPD’s narcotics enforcement unit, which White led.

White has yet to be sentenced. Two other detectives, Jose Silva and Justin Kasperzyk, with the narcotics enforcement unit, have also pleaded guilty to charges.

Silva was sentenced to three months in jail and a year of parole in January, while Kasperzyk awaits his sentencing March 27.

Philip Jacobs is set to appear in court April 9.

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