The scorned woman accused of cooking up a bizarre plan to have a former lover branded with an “R” on his torso inadvertently tipped off cops to the identity of one of her alleged accomplices – by calling him from a police precinct phone after she was busted, The Post has learned.
Kristina Caban’s boneheaded phone call last week to paramour and alleged fellow plotter Robert Testagrossa led to Testagrossa’s arrest for his alleged role in branding 23-year-old Samir Sara with the 4-inch letter in a Chelsea hotel, a law-enforcement source said.
Caban, a 21-year-old School of Visual Arts graduate, had seethed for years that Sara never called her after they slept together in 2004, the source said.
The Manhattan woman allegedly exacted her revenge Oct. 22, after she arranged to meet Sara for drinks at the Half King bar in Chelsea. She suggested the pair head to the nearby Chelsea Inn, where Testagrossa and another man waited, the source said.
When Sara and Caban entered the room, the two men allegedly punched him in the face, robbed him of $10 and took his cellphone. Testagrossa, 25, who works in law enforcement, then allegedly displayed a badge and screamed at Sara, “I’m a Long Island police officer. Get on the ground!”
The men, who were armed with a gun and a Taser, allegedly restrained Sara with duct tape, pulled down his pants and branded the “R” on him.
When police picked up Caban after the attack, she told detectives that she was using her post-arrest phone call to phone a boyfriend, the source said.
When cops checked a record of the call, they saw it was to Long Island.
The phone number was traced to Testagrossa, whose father, Charles, is executive assistant district attorney for major crimes in Queens, and whose mother, Maria, is a lawyer in the Nassau County DA’s office.
Testagrossa was busted Saturday on charges of robbery, unlawful imprisonment, assault with disfigurement, kidnapping and criminal impersonation. He was later released after posting $25,000 bail.
Testagrossa works for a law-enforcement agency in Manhattan in a covert unit that does money-laundering investigations, a source said.
Caban is being held on Rikers Island in lieu of $35,000 bail on charges of kidnapping, robbery and assault.
The third suspect remains at large.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona