'Cook' Who Made Drugs Sold In NYC Gets 10 Years In Prison

BROOKLYN, NY — A Brooklyn federal judge on Friday sentenced a Mexican drug "cook" to 10 years in prison for manufacturing powerful drugs sold in New York City. Jose Dagoberto Cortez-Perez pleaded guilty in September to federal drug charges stemming from his work as a chemist for a violent drug cartel, federal prosecutors said.

Cortez-Perez played a role in a Mexican operation that imported and sold tons of heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and cocaine in Brooklyn, Queens and other places across the United States, prosecutors said.

"Cortez-Perez travelled around the country on behalf of the cartel and enhanced the addictive nature of its narcotics, which ultimately increased demand and price for them," Richard Donoghue, the U.S. attorney for New York's Eastern District, said in a statement. "Today, drug trafficking organizations are on notice that we will bring the full weight of the law to bear on those activities that destabilize our communities."

Cortez-Perez, a native of Sinaloa, Mexico, came to the U.S. as a drug "cook" tasked with purifying methamphetamine that wasn't up to snuff or had become contaminated, prosecutors said. The high-quality meth he made was then sold across the country, prosecutors said.

Drug Enforcement and Administration agents found evidence of the drug "cleaning" operation, along with over 140 pounds of meth and $130,000 in cash, in a 2016 search of two homes in Minnesota, where Cortez-Perez was arrested, prosecutors said.

Cortez-Perez pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to import more than 500 grams of methamphetamine, more than one kilogram of heroin, more than five kilograms of cocaine and more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana.

He will face deportation from the U.S. after serving his prison sentence, prosecutors said.

(Lead image: A German law enforcement official displays crystal meth November 2014. Photo by Hannelore Foerster/Getty Images)