Three Men Indicted in Alleged Amityville Cocaine Ring, Prosecutors Say

Two Suffolk County men accused of keeping an alleged cocaine dealer supplied could spend the rest of their lives in prison if convicted, prosecutors said Thursday, after a grand jury charged them with operating as major traffickers.

That count is the top charge against both Pawell Cassidy Guzman Jimenez, who lives in North Amityville, and Isaul Soto Mejia, who lives in Lindenhurst, and as a class A felony it carries a possible sentence of 25 years to life. The man prosecutors describe as their customer and the group's street seller, Gaspal German Santos of Lindenhurst, faces a top charge of first-degree criminal sale that carries a maximum of 20 years. A judge set identical bail for all three at their arraignments: $2 million in cash, a $10 million bond or a $20 million partially secured bond.

What investigators say they found adds up to several kilograms of cocaine, more than $7,600 in cash and the supplies needed to package drugs by the thousands. Most of it came from an Amityville house, on Park Place, that prosecutors call the group's stash house. When they searched it on Oct. 2, investigators found several kilograms of cocaine, with 1,079 small bags of it seemingly ready for sale, along with roughly 15,000 empty glassine envelopes, scales, cutting agents and about $5,538. A second search six days later, at German Santos' home in Lindenhurst, turned up another 170 grams, roughly $2,072, paraphernalia and what the district attorney's office called a ledger of drug sales.

The packaging was the heart of the alleged business. Splitting kilos into tiny bags took time but, prosecutors said, roughly doubled what the group earned. Each packet held about a third of a gram.

The evidence also rests on an undercover officer who, the district attorney's office said, bought cocaine from German Santos 11 times between March and October. The June 25 deal shows how the supply worked, prosecutors said: surveillance teams saw Soto Mejia hand German Santos a Target bag in his car, and the 200 grams the officer had ordered were inside it when it reached the officer. A later deal, for a full kilogram in mid-September, was traced to Guzman Jimenez, the office said.

All three were arrested earlier this month after the two searches, and Guzman Jimenez was taken into custody at the Amityville house.

"Eleven separate sales to an undercover are not isolated transactions," District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney said in a statement. "As alleged, this was a deliberate, sustained operation fueled by suppliers and a seller who kept coming back for more."

The indictment lays out a long list of counts. German Santos is charged with eight first-degree sale counts, which are class A-1 felonies, plus second-degree possession, second-degree conspiracy, three counts of third-degree sale, 12 counts of third-degree possession and three paraphernalia misdemeanors. Beyond the trafficking charge, the two alleged suppliers are each accused of first-degree possession, second-degree conspiracy and paraphernalia counts, along with first-degree sale and third-degree possession charges, one and two of them respectively for Soto Mejia and two and three for Guzman Jimenez.

Philip Goglas, an acting state Supreme Court justice, handled all three arraignments Thursday. They return to court on different dates, Guzman Jimenez on Nov. 16, German Santos on Dec. 9 and Soto Mejia on Dec. 11. Their lawyers are Adreine Edwards for Guzman Jimenez, Raymond Baierlien for German Santos and Larry Flowers for Soto Mejia.

The case was built by a task force for the East End, a unit of the district attorney's office that draws on officers from several county, state and town agencies.

The charges are accusations. Each defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.