A former Geneva police sergeant who spent 13 years on the force will spend 16 weekends behind bars after admitting he sold prescription stimulants while wearing the badge. Michael Tapscott pleaded guilty in February to 40 counts of official misconduct and criminal possession of a controlled substance, and in May he was sentenced to those jail weekends plus five years of probation.
Judge Frederick Reed handed down the sentence, according to fltimes.com, closing out a case that began when authorities said Tapscott sold dextroamp-amphetamine — a generic form of Adderall that requires a prescription — to someone at a used car dealership on Route 14 north of the city in April 2025. As 13WHAM-TV reported, Tapscott resigned from the Geneva Police Department on May 6, 2025, one day before he was formally charged with criminal sale of a controlled substance and official misconduct.
A Pattern Investigators Say Ran On and Off Duty
Geneva's sheriff, David Cirencione, said Tapscott was regularly soliciting other members of the police department and members of the community to purchase or sell controlled substances while he was both on and off duty. The station's report also noted that the investigation leaned on body camera footage, dozens of witnesses and more than one million text messages pulled from various devices before the case reached a grand jury.
A separate account from WHEC described investigators characterizing Tapscott's conduct as a pattern of behavior, trying to get people of the community and from the police department to buy and/or sell controlled substances both on and off duty, according to whec.com. That outlet reported Tapscott would offer to trade firearm magazines, ammunition and other personal property to obtain the substances in question.
Three Other Men Swept Into the Case
Tapscott was not the only one indicted when a grand jury handed up charges on October 22, 2025. David Felice, a former Geneva police sergeant, was charged with tampering with physical evidence, seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and official misconduct, and had been placed on leave in connection with the prescription drug sales scheme, per the same account. A third man, William McGowan, was charged with tampering with physical evidence in the same indictment.
Felice later pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a controlled substance and was sentenced to a one-year conditional discharge, according to 13WHAM-TV. That plea also requires him to forfeit his police certification. McGowan's case, meanwhile, was still pending as of the station's latest report, and no update on its procedural status has been confirmed since.
A Fourth Officer Decertified
A fourth man, Nathan Jacon, was also indicted in the prescription drug sales case and was arraigned about a week after the October indictments came down. He pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a controlled substance in May, and was sentenced to a conditional discharge requiring him to sign decertification forms, according to fingerlakesdailynews.com. That outlet reported Jacon has been decertified and can no longer serve as a police officer in New York.
Taken together, the four cases paint a picture of a scheme that stretched beyond a single bad actor, reaching into the ranks of the department itself. With Tapscott sentenced, Felice and Jacon decertified, and McGowan's case still working through the courts, the fallout from the investigation continues to unfold more than a year after it first came to light.
