Deadly NYC Drug Dealers Cuffed In 'Operation Breaking Bad'

THE BRONX, NY — Authorities arrested 18 members of a Bronx drug ring this week who allegedly sold heroin that caused five fatal overdoses. The group had distributed more than 100 kilograms of heroin — much of it mixed with the deadly opioid fentanyl — since 2015, federal prosecutors said.

"This is a violent criminal organization that really was pushing poison out to the streets of New York City and the suburbs," NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said.

The alleged dealers were collared Monday and Tuesday after an 11-month joint investigation by the NYPD and FBI dubbed "Operation Breaking Bad," officials said.

Authorities recovered three kilograms of heroin, two pounds of marijuana, a loaded gun and about $300,000 in cash Tuesday after searching several Bronx locations the operation used, officials said.

The group sold heroin in part of the Bronx's University Heights neighborhood, using unique "stamps" to market its potentially lethal drugs, Manhattan federal prosecutors said. The group has been linked to overdoses in New York City and Westchester County, Shea said.

Glassine bags marked with some of its stamps, including "Obsession," "Fist with a Power Cord" and "Hands Up," were found at the scenes of five fatal heroin overdoses from September 2017 to this January, prosecutors said. The alleged dealers stopped using each of those stamps after the deaths, according to prosecutors.

The group's drugs were also responsible for several other overdoses from which the victims recovered, Shea said.

"Even after they realized the potency of the drugs they were distributing and selling – and the overdose risk those drugs posed – the defendants allegedly continued to sell their poison and to fuel the opioid epidemic plaguing our nation," Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney for New York's Southern District, said in a statement.

The alleged traffickers include 17 people from the Bronx and one from upstate Elizaville. Each is charged with one count of conspiring to distribute heroin and fentanyl, for which they could get at least 10 years in prison if convicted, prosecutors said.

(Video courtesy of the NYPD)

(Lead image: A police officer holds a bag of heroin confiscated as evidence on March 22, 2016 in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)