U.S. Says It Disrupted Major Heroin-Importing Operation in Bronx

20-05-2015 11:43
There were few outward signs of the thriving heroin stash house that federal officials say was being operated on a quiet block in the Bronx across from Van Cortlandt Park. No one seemed to be permanently living in the apartment, 5E, at 210 West 251st Street, just outside the exclusive Fieldston neighborhood, officials said.
 
But as federal agents raided the hide-out over the weekend, they upended what they described on Tuesday as a major heroin-importing organization that had ties to an area in Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel and that had been receiving multimillion-dollar shipments of the drug at least once a month since 2013.
 
Traffickers from Mexico even visited New York to see things for themselves, taking in the sights and visiting Times Square, officials said.
 
The seizure on Sunday capped an elaborate yearlong investigation, yielding 70 kilograms of heroin — or nearly 155 pounds — that investigators say came from Mexico and was sold in chunks to various dealers for distribution upstate and across the Northeast.
 
The seizure, had the drugs been broken down in heroin mills and packaged into $10 envelopes, was enough “to supply a dose of heroin for each and every New York City resident, man, woman and child,” the city’s special narcotics prosecutor, Bridget G. Brennan, said. She estimated the drugs’ street value at roughly $50 million.
 
According to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, it was the largest seizure of heroin by its agents in the city, and the agency’s fourth largest haul nationwide. Officials said it represented a disruption that would send a message to traffickers, cause dealers to scramble for a supply and, potentially, save lives.
 

But it was not the largest amount ever intercepted in the city. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, two shipments of more than 200 pounds each were seized from cars aboard passenger ships entering the city. In 1989, federal agents uncovered 849 pounds of heroin in Flushing, Queens, and in 1991, 1,071 pounds was found in Oakland, Calif.

An automobile was also the method of concealment in the weekend case, which comes amid a resurgence of heroin sales in New York City and elsewhere.
 
Investigators listening in on a wiretap learned that the drug-importing organization was expecting delivery of another large load over the weekend and set up surveillance outside the apartment on West 251st Street, officials said.
 
Court documents gave this account:
 
On Saturday, investigators followed as Yenci Cruz Francisco, 19, steered a late-model Chevrolet Suburban sport utility vehicle from its parking spot in a gated lot behind the Bronx building to an industrial parking lot off Interstate 287 in Montville, N.J.
 
Trailing the Suburban in a Honda Accord were Jose A. Mercedes, 46, and an unidentified woman. After the vehicles stayed for about an hour in a lot used by tractor-trailers, they headed back to the Bronx — this time with the woman driving the Suburban alone, and the two men following.
 

After the Suburban returned to the Bronx and was parked behind the apartment building, a drug-sniffing dog detected narcotics in it.

On Sunday morning, the agents moved in.
 
Mr. Mercedes showed up at the safe house around 10 a.m., his car containing several large bags of heroin, officials said. Then, as Mr. Cruz Francisco left the safe house and got into the Suburban, he was stopped.
 
Inside the Suburban, 70 rectangular kilogram packages of heroin, marked with the identifying name “Rolex,” were discovered in a cache built under the floor, officials said.
 
Investigators also confiscated $2 million in cash under the floorboards of the apartment and a handgun from another location, Ms. Brennan said.
 
Agents arrested Mr. Mercedes, who is charged with running the operation, and Mr. Francisco, who was charged with drug-trafficking offenses.
 
In November, they arrested Mr. Mercedes’s son, Jose Mercedes Jr., 23, and Juan Infante, 47, and charged them with several crimes, including criminal possession of a controlled substance, after seizing 10 kilograms of heroin that was hidden in a compartment inside a wall.
 
Patrick J. Brackley, a lawyer who represented Mr. Mercedes and his son and Mr. Cruz Francisco at arraignment on Tuesday, said there “needs to be more investigation” into the government’s case.
 
“They’re seemingly charged in the same conspiracy, but when the evidence comes out, it will be a different story,” Mr. Brackley said. “They have cast a very wide net.”
 
All but the elder Mr. Mercedes are legal permanent residents of the United States, a law enforcement official said.
 
On Tuesday, on West 251st Street, residents said the area, though just north of the prestigious private school Horace Mann and Manhattan College, was a bit rougher than the neighborhood’s tonier corners.
 
Pauline LaCambra, 45, a nurse at St. Joseph’s Medical Center who lives near the site of the arrests, said a nearby gas station had been robbed repeatedly before being shut down. It is now covered in graffiti.
 
“The outskirts here,” she said of the area, “are different.”
 
Jonathan Chickavelli, 48, who lives in an apartment next to Apartment 5E, said that he had seen its occupants only twice since the end of March and that he never suspected that such an operation was being run so close to his home. Yet, he said, it made sense.
 
“It seems like that’s like a trend,” he said. “That’s like a thing they’re doing now. You know, you stay away from where the hot spots are and you go into a nice neighborhood and hide.”
 
Correction: May 19, 2015 
Because of an editing error, a headline with an earlier version of this article misstated where law enforcement officials found 155 pounds of heroin. It was in a vehicle, not an apartment.

Kate Pastor contributed reporting, and Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
 

 

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