Queens Sex Worker Gets 30 Years For Drugging Men In Astoria, Woodside

QUEENS, NY — A former sex worker who fatally drugged clients at four different Queens motels in 2019 was sentenced to 30 years in prison on Tuesday, authorities announced.

Angelina Barini, 43, was sentenced by District Judge Brian M. Cogan in a Brooklyn federal court more than two years after the drugging spree, which left four men dead.

According to authorities, Barini's first target was a man whom she met on July 4, 2019 at an unspecified motel in Astoria. There, Barini gave him fentanyl-laced drugs in an effort to incapacitate and then rob him, prosecutors said.

The man was found dead inside the hotel room around 11 a.m. that day, with a cause of death later determined to be combined intoxiation of alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl, according to an indictment. Surveillance footage showed Barini leaving the hotel around 9:30 a.m. that day, prosecutors said.

A week later, on July 11, Barini met with another man at a Woodside motel and gave him fentanyl, killing him, according to authorities. She repeated the crime on Aug. 5, killing a man in College Point, Queens, prosecutors said.

Finally, on Aug. 18, Barini met another man — Andrea Zamperoni, head chef at the restaurant Cipriani Dolci — at the Kamway Lodge in Elmhurst. There, Barini drugged him with the "date rape" drug GBL, and he died shortly after entering the room.

After Zamperoni was reported missing, police arrived at the motel on Aug. 21, where Barini was still inside the room, according to an indictment. After gaining entry, officers smelled a dead body and found a garbage can stuffed with bed linens and "a bare human foot sticking out," according to the indictment.

An alleged accomplice, Leslie Lescano — reportedly Barini's ex-boyfriend — was arrested last year in connection with the scheme.

“The defendant drugged and killed multiple people for a few quick dollars. She stole their personal belongings while they lay unconscious dying from the lethal drugs she gave them," Breon Peace, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement. "The defendant’s substantial prison sentence is warranted by her shocking disregard for human life."

Barini's sister told the New York Post that the sentence was "harsh" and said it would be appealed.