NYC Heroin Ring Recruited Customers From Treatment Program: Feds

MANHATTAN, NY — A grand jury indicted 11 people Wednesday for their alleged roles in running a New York City heroin ring that recruited customers from a drug treatment program, court papers say.

The alleged traffickers bought heroin in bulk in Brooklyn and distributed it in that borough, as well as Manhattan and Staten Island, from 2015 through this month, according to an indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court.

One man, Medin Kosic, supplied eight alleged traffickers with loads of heroin to sell, while others managed "stash houses" in Brooklyn and Staten Island and helped facilitate drug deals, the indictment says.

Kenneth Charlton, another of the defendants, recruited customers for the dealers from the drug treatment program and other places, the indictment alleges.

The group regularly sold heroin laced with fentanyl despite knowing first-hand how dangerous the opioids are, the indictment says. One of the alleged traffickers, Shaun Sullivan, overdosed in October 2017 on heroin he got from Kosic, according to the indictment.

The defendants — Sullivan, Kosic, Charlton, Jasmin Cejovic, Paul Van Manen, Misrad Bogdanovic, Theodore Banasky, Anthony Francese, Alexander Bucci, Joseph Cucciniello and Jennifer Bogdanovic — face charges including conspiracy to distribute at least a kilogram each of heroin and fentanyl.

(Lead image: Bags of heroin are displayed at a news conference in September 2016. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)