At least one person has been charged after the Drug Enforcement Administration says it made a multi-million dollar drug bust in New York City.
DEA agents seized over 40 pounds of methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl hidden around a crowded apartment building in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, unbeknownst to most who live there, authorities said.
MDMA drug ring was targeting young people, DEA says
Frank Tarentino, special agent in charge of the DEA’s New York division, said the drugs were ingredients to manufacture 120,000 fatal pills.
The criminal organization advertised them as MDMA, the popular club drug also known as ecstasy, and had been tricking people online, he said.
“The MDMA that we saw on the streets two, three, four, five years ago is very different than what we’re seeing today, because it’s actually methamphetamine laced with fentanyl,” Tarentino said.
The pills, which resemble the marshmallows found in Lucky Charms cereal, are marketed to young people, he added.
“This is the calculated, deliberate treachery that these organizations are involved in,” Tarentino said. “As we get ready to go back to college and as we get ready to go back to school, we really want our young people to be mindful of the dangers that are out there.”
Seized drugs worth millions on the street, DEA says
According to the DEA’s New York division, the drugs that were seized last month hold millions of dollars in street value. They were found stashed behind trap doors built into the walls of three apartments at a building on Wadsworth and Audubon Avenue in Upper Manhattan.
Agents also seized an industrial-scale pill press machine.
“Pressing hundreds of thousands of pills for distribution throughout the New York City area and the northeast,” Tarentino said.
The bust was three years in the making, according to officials.
DEA warns pills contain lethal doses of fentanyl
Half of the pills seized by the DEA last year in the U.S. contained lethal doses of fentanyl, the opioid responsible for nearly 75,000 overdose deaths nationwide in 2023.
“The ingredients which they’re using come from mostly China and oftentimes it’s going through Mexico and into the United States,” Tarentino said.
Authorities charged 38-year-old Jose Dario Veras with conspiring to distribute fentanyl and methamphetamine in the Washington Heights bust.
Still, the special agent in charge said when one pill mill is taken down, another operation is usually waiting to take over.
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