Major Drug Trafficker Ran NYC Operation From Dominican: Officials

NEW YORK – A drug trafficker responsible for flooding New York City with hundreds of thousands of packets of heroin and fentanyl has been arrested in the Dominican Republic, officials said Monday.

Anyerson Delacruz-Rosario, also known as Angelo, set up and supplied several packaging operations that worked out of The Bronx, according to charges.

He was arrested in July and moved to New York on Aug. 23. He was due to appear in court in the city Monday and faces life in prison.

A long-term wiretap surveillance found Delacruz- Rosario was remotely running at least two packaging operations, using coded messages to buy large quantities of heroin and fentanyl which would be processed and distributed to users in glassine envelopes. The wiretap revealed trafficking between December 2014 and March 2016.

The wiretap operation started after the overdose death of a man in upstate New York. Investigators traced the drugs to a facility at West 238 Street in Kingsbridge that officers believed was run by the Dominican. A raid in 2015 closed it down, resulted in five arrests and recovered thousands of packages of heroin.

But the wiretapping investigation continued, and revealed that Delacruz-Rosario had set up another packaging mill later the same year, officials said. That operation was shut down, leading to arrests, in 2016.

Bridget G. Brennan, New York City’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor, said, "The indictment announced today sends an important message. We will relentlessly pursue drug barons who reap millions in profits by causing addiction and death in New York, regardless of their attempts to insulate themselves in foreign lands."

Delacruz-Rosario was hit with charges including operating as a major drug trafficker.