AUG 25 (NEW YORK CITY) – Fernando Quiles and Jorge Ayala were arrested Tuesday in Croton-on-Hudson in northern Westchester County, New York for possession of over 65 lbs. of heroin.
James J. Hunt, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York Division (DEA) and Bridget G. Brennan, New York City’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor, announced the arrest.
The heroin was hidden in the axle of a truck’s trailer. Quiles and Ayala were intending to sell the heroin for up to $2.3 million to distributors in New York City, Long Island and across the Northeast. When repackaged for street-level distribution, the shipment would have yielded more than half a million individual doses of heroin.
“This heroin had a long journey from Mexico to New York where it was destined for distribution throughout Long Island, New York City and the Northeast,” Hunt explained.
The arrests culminated a three-month wiretap investigation by the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor’s Investigators Unit and Group D-12, agents from the DEA’s Long Island District Office Task Force. The combined team identified Quiles and Ayala as narcotics traffickers with Quiles allegedly receiving tractor-trailer shipments of narcotics from a Mexico-based organization. The drug shipments crossed the Texas border and travelled into the New York City area where both men allegedly coordinated distribution of narcotics to their customer base.
Quiles and Ayala face charges of Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the First Degree, Conspiracy in the Second Degree, Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the Third Degree and Criminally Using Drug Paraphernalia in the Second Degree. Both defendants were arraigned Thursday night in Manhattan Criminal Court and ordered held without bail.
