Six men ran a massive drug ring that pumped lethal narcotics into Long Island from The Bronx, getting caught with enough fentanyl to kill everyone in Suffolk County, police said.
The half dozen men allegedly ran a large-scale fentanyl and cocaine pipeline that starts in The Bronx and scaled all the way through Long Island, flooding the area with deadly drugs that are responsible for hundreds of deaths in Suffolk County each year, authorities said.
“We will not tolerate predators — if you deal in these deadly poisons and you operate in Suffolk County, we along with our partners will investigate you, we will charge you, and we will hold you responsible to the highest level of the law we are able to do,” Suffolk County DA Ray Tierney told reporters at the county’s Police Academy in Brentwood on Friday.
All six were arraigned in Central Islip on Halloween and have pleaded not guilty.
From April to October, undercover cops bought 7,400 fake oxycodone pills and nearly three kilos of cocaine worth $245,000 throughout 13 exchanges, prosecutors said.
Police then hit the six suspect’s homes with search warrants just one day before Halloween, with more than half living in homes across Suffolk County in West Islip, Bay Shore, Wyandanch, and Lindenhurst, authorities said.
Suffolk police arrested and charged John Collado, 26, Michael Torres, 26, Yergenis Paulino, 25, Luiggi Peralta, 31, Anthony Dominguez, 33, and David Priest, 35 with a laundry list of drugs and weapons charges.
Collado was charged with more than 40 felony counts, including top charges of first-degree drug sales and possession, as well as a weapons charge and conspiracy, while Dominguez and Torres were charged with multiple counts of drug and weapons possession and conspiracy as well.
Priest, Paulino, and Peralta were all charged with multiple drug sales and possession charges on top of conspiracy.
Inside Torres’ home in Wyandanch, police found a kilogram of cocaine, three kilograms of fentanyl, another five kilograms of heroin, and roughly 2,000 pressed fentanyl pills along with an illegal handgun he was found sleeping with when cops raided, authorities said.
“That’s enough fentanyl to kill all 1.5 million residents of Suffolk County — every man, woman and child,” Tierney said.
“Every kilogram of fentanyl represents 500,000 potential overdose deaths,” he added.
At Collado’s West Islip residence, police said they recovered a loaded handgun along with roughly an ounce each of heroin and cocaine.
Dominguez’s Bay Shore home turned up seven high-capacity ammunition magazines, about 600 grams of cocaine hidden in a scooter, a hydraulic kilogram press, and another loaded handgun found in his Dodge Durango, officials said.
In Peralta’s homes in both the Lindenhurst and the Bronx, detectives seized over $10,000 in cash and a money counter believed to have been used in the operation, prosecutors added.
In total, police seized five kilograms of heroin, four kilograms of fentanyl, and nearly two kilos of cocaine, along with about 2,000 fentanyl-laced pills during the October 30 raids, officials said.
Investigators also recovered an armory of weapons, including two Taurus 9mm pistols, a Glock 43X handgun, a Mossberg .22 caliber rifle, a 20-gauge shotgun, seven high-capacity magazines — including three 50-round “drum” clips — and a military-style ammo can filled with rounds, prosecutors said.
“These individuals flooded communities in the Bronx and across Long Island with deadly fentanyl and had zero regard for the devastation they caused,” said NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
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