NO SMALL VICTORY IN THE WAR ON DRUGS

Cocaine 'kingpin' who 'used his dead mother's NYC apartment as headquarters for a massive drug ring' is busted after months of surveillance

By Keith Griffith

Daily Mail
April 5, 2018

An accused cocaine kingpin has been arrested after police said he used his dead mother's Upper West Side apartment as the nerve center of a massive drug ring.

Gerardo Gonzalez, 43, was arraigned on drug, conspiracy and money laundering charges on Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court. He and five others are charged in the multi-state scheme.

Prosecutors said that Gonzalez, using a cocaine supplier from Jersey City, distributed the drugs to customers on the sidewalks and streets outside his apartment building, which is right across the street from a middle school playground.

The operation moved up 10 kilos a week at $30,000 apiece, raking in as much as $1.2million a month, prosecutors said. Some $270,000 cash was seized in the bust-up of the trafficking ring, as well as kilos of coke stamped with five-pointed crowns.

The arrests follow a painstaking joint investigation by New York City’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor, the New York State Police, and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.

'As this case demonstrates, no neighborhood is too sedate for drug traffickers,' said Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan in a statement.

'After his mother passed away, Gerardo Gonzalez is alleged to have seized the opportunity to turn her Upper West Side apartment into the operational base for a multistate ring selling shipments of cocaine worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,' Brennan continued.

'As we have seen before, a familiar, quiet residential neighborhood is attractive real estate to a drug dealer who wants to lay low, avoid detection by law enforcement and escape the notice of stick up crews who might view him as an easy mark for robbery,' the prosecutor said.

Investigators said they surveilled as Gonzalez met with his supplier, 40-year-old Jose Martinez of Jersey City, New Jersey, to buy kilos of cocaine at a time.

Gonzalez would then meet with customers and associates to distribute the drugs, often doing deals in parked cars outside his apartment, cops said. Some of Gonzalez's customers drove cars with out-of-state license plates from Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Washington, DC.

To hide his ill-gotten gains, Gonzalez would haul duffel bags full of cash to Brooklyn to hand off to alleged money launderer Xiongbin Zhao.

On January 3, investigators covertly watched as Gonzalez met with Zhao on a residential street in Brooklyn's Dyker Heights. After the meeting, cops pulled Zhao over and busted him with a bag filled with over $180,000 cash.

Gonzalez began to grow paranoid as the surveillance net closed around him.

On January 31, in a phone conversation with one of his alleged dealers in the Bronx, 42-year-old Eric Espinal, Gonzalez whispered that he thought the 'FBI or DEA' had him under surveillance. Investigators were wiretapping the call.

The following week, cops swooped in on the Upper West Side apartment that Gonzalez had taken over after his mother's death.

They found two kilos of cocaine imprinted with the sign of a crown, smaller baggies of coke, over 30 grams of heroin mixed with methamphetamine and the animal tranquilizer xylazine and multiple non-controlled substances, prosecutors said.

Also recovered in the raid were $60,000 cash stuffed in a bag and a drawer, a money counter and drug packaging equipment.

A raid of Espinal's Bronx apartment yielded a pound of cocaine, four pounds of marijuana and $30,000 cash, cops said.

Also arrested and charged in the investigation were 34-year-old Vance Hall of Pittsburgh 43-year-old Socrates Santana of Manhattan's Upper West Side. Both were allegedly dealers in the network.

Gonzalez was remanded during a court appearance on Thursday, while Santana and Hall were freed on bond until their next appearances.

The arraignments of Martinez, Espinal and Zhao are pending.