A significant New York Metropolis drug trafficker and 12 others have been nabbed in a citywide, multi-agency drug bust following a year-long investigation into narcotics and gun trafficking in Brooklyn and Queens, officers introduced Saturday.
Through the prolonged investigation, an undercover officer bought giant quantities of fentanyl, cocaine and heroin with a road worth of greater than $3 million, in keeping with the Drug Enforcement Company.
In whole, 33 kilos of cocaine and 25 kilos of fentanyl mixtures have been seized together with an assault weapon and three weapons.
Legislation enforcement recognized 41-year-old Nelson Cruz because the ringleader of the operation. He’s charged with working as a significant trafficker.
Cruz and 12 others have been arrested in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx on expenses contained in two indictments and two legal court docket complaints that have been filed on Saturday.
In accordance with the DEA, roughly one 12 months in the past, defendant Manuel Suriel allegedly started promoting cocaine at a restaurant in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. Officers mentioned Suriel launched a number of different alleged drug traffickers to a “co-representative of Cruz” about promoting narcotics in Queens and Brooklyn.
Suriel and the Cruz co-rep made their first sale to an undercover cop in October 2021. The second sale was for 100 grams of fentanyl in alternate for $5,100 in a Goal parking zone in School Level, Queens.
By January 2021, the investigation shifted its consideration from Suriel to Cruz and his group, which relies out of the Richmond Hill and South Ozone neighborhoods in Queens. Cruz and his gang, investigators discovered, would recurrently make large-scale narcotics gross sales within the $10,000-$16,000 vary.
A wiretap investigation revealed Cruz was conspiring with different defendants to distribute narcotics all through town. Cruz was receiving imported shipments of cocaine from Puerto Rico and fentanyl from Mexico. By February, he was dealing weapons, officers mentioned.
The primary arrest was made on June 7 and the ultimate on June 15 after police executed search warrants at areas in Brooklyn and Queens and the Bronx that yielded the huge quantities of medicine and several other weapons.
“Dismantling fentanyl trafficking organizations is our precedence as a result of out of all unlawful medication, fentanyl is killing the most individuals. This investigation highlights how drug traffickers are armed and harmful, promoting medication and weapons on our metropolis streets,” DEA Particular Agent in Cost Frank Tarantino III mentioned in a press release.
The New York Drug Enforcement Process Pressure Group T-23 and the Workplace of the Particular Narcotics Prosecutor’s Investigators Unit led the investigation, officers mentioned.
