Queens Sex Worker Arrested For Role In Cipriani Chef's Death

QUEENS, NY — A Queens sex worker is facing charges that she gave her clients fentanyl, which led to at least two fatal overdoses and may be linked to a Cipriani chef's mysterious death last week in an Elmhurst hostel.

Law enforcement officers have arrested Angelina Barini, 41, as part of a Homeland Security investigation into several fatal drug overdoses in New York City hotel rooms this summer.

Barini and two others, identified only as co-conspirators, plied her clients with drugs then took their possessions, according to newly unsealed court records.

The sex worker's clients included Cipriani Dolci chef Andrea Zamperoni, 33, who was found dead last week after his days-long disappearance prompted extensive media coverage.

Barini told investigators that Zamperoni had paid her for sex on Aug. 18, then her pimp had given him a drug she said was liquid ecstasy. They were at the Kamway Lodge in Elmhurst together when Zamperoni's nose and mouth started bleeding and he wouldn't wake up, she said.

Investigators found Zamperoni's body wrapped in bed sheets in a garbage can that Barini had dragged into the hostel room from an alleyway, surveillance video showed.

They also found a glass filled with purple liquid and topped with powder, glass pipes, bottles of bleach, a power saw and an empty suitcase, according to court records.

The medical examiner's office found no external injuries on Zamperoni's body, and the results of a toxicology report are pending.

Prosecutors have tied Barini to the July 11 fatal fentanyl overdose of a man at Crown Motor Inn in Woodside, as well as the July 4 overdose death of a man at Airway Inn at LaGuardia from a mixture of alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl, according to prosecutors and a federal law enforcement source.

Barini told investigators she was a sex worker and sometimes gave her clients drugs, according to court records. Once the clients were drugged and incapacitated, the group sometimes stole their possessions.