Two cops have been charged with stealing cash during a fake drunk driving stop on the Lower East Side last October, the Manhattan District Attorney announced on Tuesday.

NYPD Officers Joseph Stokes, 40, and Jose Aracena, 35, were charged with stealing $4,800 and $220, respectively, during an “integrity test” conducted by the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau.

During the test, an undercover officer acted as a drunk driver on Stanton and Orchard streets about 1:45 a.m. on October 29th.

Stokes and Aracena stopped the undercover cop and searched his car, and prosecutors say Stokes found several canned drinks with about $4,800 in cash concealed inside. According to the D.A., Stokes was seen on camera hiding the cans of cash beneath his own car.

The undercover officer told Stokes about the money, and Stokes allegedly said he tossed the cans into a garbage truck that had passed by. Two cans were found beneath Stokes’s car the same day, according to police.

Aracena, meanwhile, was seen on hidden cameras taking about $220 from the car while searching for registration paperwork, prosecutors allege. Neither officer vouchered the money they found, according to prosecutors.

“These officers are accused of stealing from someone they believed to be the perpetrator of a crime—in other words, someone who might have been met with disbelief had they come forward to report a theft by police officers,” DA Cy Vance said in a statement.

But Stokes, who is suing the NYPD, claims a different chain of events.

In a notice of claim filed against the NYPD January 23rd, Stokes said he was wrongfully arrested following the integrity test, claiming the NYPD sought revenge against him for an April 2018 arrest of a well-connected drunk driver. Stokes pulled over an unnamed Audi driver, who appeared to be drunk, according to the notice of claim. The driver said he was friends with former Commissioner James O’Neill and NYPD Chief Jeffery Maddrey, showing photos of him with the two higher-ups on his phone. He told Stokes that the cop would “pay for this,” legal papers say.

About a year and a half later, the integrity test was conducted on Stokes and Aracena.

Rather than stealing cash as prosecutors have charged, legal papers say that undercover officer had asked if Stokes would get a can of iced tea from the car while he was in a cell at the Seventh Precinct stationhouse. Stokes later found the undercover cop “with a large amount of United States Currency in his possession.” Stokes then realized the can was secretly full of cash, and he soon after “vouchered both the cash and the dummy” can, the notice of claim says.

Stokes’s pending lawsuit alleges that he was arrested and continuously interrogated for five hours after he “asserted his right to counsel several times.” Stokes is suing for civil rights violations, a false arrest, and $100 million in damages.

“He is a hero officer being smeared by the NYPD and the New York County District Attorney’s Office,” Joe Murray, the lawyer representing Stokes in the civil suit, said. “Someone else needs to come in objectively and look at what they did and see what the facts are… He’s in custody in the DA’s office for five hours without any due process whatsoever.”

It was not immediately clear who was representing Aracena.

Stokes was charged with grand larceny, and Aracena was charged with petit larceny, according to Vance’s office. Both cops were also slapped with official misconduct charges.

Both officers, who have been with the department for about eight years, have been suspended without pay, according to NYPD spokesperson Jessica McRorie. McRorie declined to comment on Stokes’s pending lawsuit.