Feds smashed a drug-dealing ring believed to be the longest-running in the city – arresting 15 people and seizing 2,500 pounds of cocaine and $730,000 in cash, officials said yesterday.
The leader of the gang was identified as fugitive Hernan Borona Dorado, a k a “Fernando Zapata,” who was in Colombia on Monday when the raid at a Brooklyn warehouse occurred, officials said.
The defendants had arranged for a huge drug shipment, authorities said, code-naming it “the Party,” before agents moved in on the warehouse at 236 Greenpoint Ave., where they allegedly found an estimated $140 million worth of cocaine.
Agents and investigators also found another 287 pounds of coke in a U-Haul and 645 pounds of the drug in a car.
The coke packages were marked with logos like Mercedes Benz, Statue of Liberty, eagles, birds, donkeys and frogs, agents said.
“This was a very sophisticated and compartmentalized organization,” said New York Customs chief Joseph Webber. “They were quite successful at what they did for quite some time.”
Sources said the gang operated unimpeded for about 15 years in New York City, avoiding detection in part by using coded language, carrying out transactions in Midtown garages and hiding drugs in the Greenpoint warehouse.