TRENTON
- Attorney General Anne Milgram announced
that the leader a Newark-based narcotics ring
that distributed millions of dollars a year
in illegal prescription painkillers such as
Oxycontin and one of his co-defendants have
pleaded guilty today. The defendants had been
on trial in Essex County.
The guilty pleas mark the
conclusion of a nearly three-year investigation
that resulted in 18 defendants being convicted
and facing a total of 210 years in state prison.
In addition, approximately $2.3 million in
assets were seized as a result of the investigation
and will be forfeited at the time of sentencing.
“The
sheer magnitude of this ring was astounding,”
Attorney General Milgram said. “In disbanding
the ring, the New Jersey State Police and
the Division of Criminal Justice have taken
millions of dollars worth of illegal prescription
drug pills off of the streets and out of the
hands of criminals.”
According
to Director Gramiccioni, Mohamed Hassanain,
43, of West Orange, pleaded guilty before
Superior Court Judge Joseph Cassini in Essex
County to racketeering and money laundering,
both in the second-degree. Hassanain’s
co-defendant, Terry A. Brooks, 33, of Newark,
pleaded guilty before Judge Cassini to second-degree
racketeering. The charges were contained in
an Aug. 2, 2007 state grand jury indictment.
Judge
Cassini scheduled sentencing for both Hassanain
and Brooks for October 26, 2009.
The charges stem from an investigation
by the New Jersey State Police and Division
of Criminal Justice, assisted by the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration. The case
is being prosecuted by Supervising Deputy
Attorney General Mark Eliades, chief of the
Division of Criminal Justice Gangs & Organized
Crime Bureau, and Deputy Attorneys General
Mark Ondris and Paul Salvatoriello.
In pleading guilty, Hassanain
admitted that between July 2005 and January
2007, he orchestrated the narcotics ring that
sold approximately 40,000 OxyContin and Percocet
pills per week. Most of the pills went to
a distribution ring based in Bronx, N.Y. The
Bronx ring in turn sold some of the drugs
to a ring in the Boston area.
The investigation, dubbed
“Operation Pandora,” determined
that Hassanain and his deputies within the
ring provided several hundred names a week
to Dr. Mario Comensanas, 53, of Livingston,
who was paid up to $100 per name to write
a “set” of prescriptions, including
60 OxyContin pills, 90 Percocet pills and
vitamins for patients that did not exist or
whom he never saw. Comensanas pleaded guilty
on March 19, 2007 to first-degree racketeering
and second-degree distribution of narcotics
for writing thousands of fraudulent prescriptions
for the ring. He is currently awaiting sentencing.
After receiving the fraudulent
prescriptions, “runners,” including
Brooks, within the ring would proceed to various
pharmacies to fill the prescriptions. In exchange
for cash, pharmacist Ahmed “Felix”
Aly, 35, of Union, would knowingly fill multiple
fraudulent prescriptions and return the narcotics
to the runners. Aly’s case was severed
from Hassanain’s trial and is currently
pending trial.
Hassanain, who ran the ring from his home
in West Orange and his business on Clinton
Avenue in Newark, admitted that he maintained
various “stash” houses around
the Essex County area where he would accumulate
tens of thousands of pills per week for wholesale
distribution. At the “stash” houses,
pills were packaged in bulk and individuals
from the Bronx would come weekly to transport
the narcotics and provide Hassanain with tens
of thousands of dollars.
On Jan. 25, 2007, the Division
of Criminal Justice executed arrest warrants
at 10 locations and upon five vehicles utilized
by the enterprise. Consequently, more than
40,000 narcotics pills, approximately $650,000
in cash, approximately nine weapons, and thousands
or prescriptions, both blank and executed,
were recovered. The state placed liens against
14 parcels of real property allegedly acquired
with the proceeds of the illegal enterprise.
Attorney General Milgram credited Detectives
Thomas McEnroe and others within the State
Police Major Crime Unit and detectives in
the Division of Criminal Justice Gangs &
Organized Crime Bureau - North Squad. She
also credited the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration
New Jersey Division, under the direction of
Special Agent in Charge Gerard P. McAleer,
the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office,
members of the NY/NJ High-Intensity Drug Trafficking
Areas program, and the New York State Police
for assisting in the investigation.
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