A former City Council candidate who got a slap on the wrist sentence for trying to steal almost $20,000 in campaign donations only goes to prison on the weekends — when a black van picks her and her baby up to bring them to Rikers Island, The Post has learned.
Celia Dosamantes, 33, was sentenced in 2018 to four months’ worth of weekends behind bars for her crimes, which included faking donations to get a 6-for-1 match from taxpayers’ coffers for her doomed campaign three years earlier.
But Dosamantes — who comes from a family of New York City politicos and wept her way through a leniency plea — doesn’t go through the typical crucible most prisoners face thanks to her cushy sentence.
A black van from the New York City Department of Correction’s transportation division picks her up every Friday at 5:30 p.m. and ferries her and her toddler to the Rose Singer Center on Rikers Island, sources confirmed to The Post.
Dosamantes brings a car seat, breast pump, kiddie medications. baby bottles and two days’ worth of clothes for her infant daughter, sources said.
When she arrives, prison staff brings the child to the facility’s nursery while Dosamantes is processed in the jail’s intake area.
Two days later, Dosamantes strolls out of the clink alongside staff and her baby.
But the DOC and sources pushed back on the idea that the council wannabe from Queens was receiving some sort of special treatment.
One correction source said Dosamantes’ 1-year-old daughter has medical issues and that “the department is literally trying to protect the welfare of a child who did nothing wrong.
“Any characterization otherwise is ridiculous,” the source fumed.
All of Dosamantes’ jail stays with her little girl are “subject to all normal visiting procedures,” another source said.
“The Department followed all appropriate nursery protocols for the health, safety, and medical needs of the child of the incarcerated individual,” a DOC spokesperson said in a statement.
Dosamantes ran for City Council in 2015, but was arrested the following year for trying to forge 32 contribution cards that totaled more than $3,000.
Then she filed documents with the Campaign Finance Board to get matching funds of nearly $19,500 from the city, authorities said. The board caught her during a compliance visit.
She faced between 1 to 4 years in prison for 35 counts of offering a false instrument and attempted grand larceny.
But Supreme Court Justice A. Kirke Bartley Jr., who presided over her forgery trial, took it easy on the then-26 year old.
He sentenced her to four months of weekend lockups, five years of probation and 400 hours of community sentence.
“I find myself in agreement with the defendant — she has the capability of being a benefit to the community,” the judge said.
“I’m going to temper my sentence. I’m not going to sentence you to state prison.”
Additional reporting by Joe Marino
