‘Brilliant’ scientist pleads guilty to running ‘Breaking Bad’-style meth lab after inadvertently calling cops on himself
A Long Island scientist copped to running a “Breaking Bad”-style meth lab that initially landed on police’s radar when he called about a break-in at the facility last year, prosecutors said.
Matthew Leshinsky, 23, accidentally called the cops on himself when he dialed 911 around 3:30 a.m. June 7 to report a burglary in progress at his purported Ronkonkoma establishment, Quantitative Laboratories LLC, the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said.
When Suffolk County police reached the scene, officers found broken glass at the entrance of the lab, a facility which they eventually realized was secretly manufacturing and pumping out methamphetamine and other controlled substances, including the hallucinogenic dimethyltryptamine, the district attorney’s office said.
More than 100 items of lab equipment, chemical reagents and solvents that go into meth were found, along with over 3 ounces of meth, 625,000 milligrams of pure ketamine and 20 plastic jugs of gamma-butyrolactone (GBL), which is similar to the “date rape drug” GHB, prosecutors said.
About $40,000 was also seized by police.
“This defendant was operating a ‘Breaking Bad’-style drug lab and tried to conceal it under the guise of a legitimate business,” Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney said in reference to the television drama series in which a chemistry teacher starts a meth lab.
“I want to thank the Suffolk County Police Department officers who keenly identified evidence of a clandestine drug lab during their initial response to the scene, as well as our prosecutors and other members of law enforcement for their collaborative efforts to further investigate this defendant and hold him accountable for the deadly drugs he put out onto the streets of Suffolk County,” he continued.
Leshinsky claimed on his LinkedIn page that Quantitative Laboratories LLC analyzes cannabis.
Though he admitted to manufacturing the potent and deadly drugs, his lawyer attempted to paint a positive picture of his client.
Attorney David Besso told Newsday his client is a “brilliant” scientist who was examining drug addiction “for the public good” and denied he sold meth out of the lab.
While he said Leshinsky applied for a Department of Environmental Conservation license, he was working without the correct certification when he was arrested.
“Unfortunately, he went about it the wrong way,” Besso told the newspaper.
The Farmingville resident overall pleaded to 13 charges tied to the case, including multiple counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance and unlawful manufacture of meth, the district attorney’s office said.
His sentencing is set for March 20.
