The F.B.I. inquiry has so far resulted in charges against a police inspector and a deputy inspector, along with a sergeant and another officer.

“I have destroyed my life,” Mr. Lichtenstein, 45, said on Thursday. “I have hurt the people who mean the most to me.”

“I am disgraced by these mistakes,” he added.

More than 100 people were at the courthouse in Manhattan to support him, having come from the ultra-Orthodox communities of Borough Park and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and from as far away as Montreal. Many came prepared to tell the judge how Mr. Lichtenstein had rushed to their assistance in their time of need.

There was a widow whose husband had disappeared in the woods of New Hampshire; Mr. Lichtenstein had helped organize the search party and comforted her while she was grieving. There was the teenage runaway who had made it as far as Arizona before Mr. Lichtenstein helped persuade her to return to Brooklyn.

They came ready to speak, but Judge Stein said he had read closely the letters they had sent him regarding Mr. Lichtenstein’s charitable deeds. The judge redirected the sentencing hearing away from a discussion of Mr. Lichtenstein’s good deeds.

He had the prosecutor recount the particulars of the crime: Mr. Lichtenstein had bribed police officers to secure 25 to 50 gun licenses, with minimum scrutiny, for various people who had paid Mr. Lichtenstein thousands of dollars for his help.

“He was lessening the faith the people of New York had in their Police Department,” Judge Stein said.