Eight Arrested, More Than $3 million In Heroin Seized In New Jersey's Union County

More than 4,300 bricks of heroin, a street value estimated at $3 million, were seized from two “fully functional, high-volume heroin mills” in Linden and Union Township on Friday after a month long investigation by the Union County Prosecutor’s Office Guns, Gangs, Drugs, and Violent Crimes Task Force and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The mills were located on the 300 block of Richford Terrace in Linden and on the 2100 block of Morris Avenue in Union Township, and at additional locations on Florida Street and Seib Avenue in Elizabeth, according to acting Union County Prosecutor Grace H. Park.

Eight people were arrested and raw heroin was actively being processed and prepared for street sale at the Linden location at the time the search warrants were executed.

According to the prosecutor’s office, the heroin mills not only supplied wholesale-quantity amounts of narcotics to multiple counties throughout New Jersey, but also to multiple out-of-state urban areas.

Those arrested were:

• William Camino, 35, of Elizabeth
• Yakin Bryant, 34, of Elizabeth
• Ricardo Gayle, 25, of Plainfield
• Jasmin Sanchez, 23, of Jersey City
• Arain Juarez-Alvarez, 25, of the Bronx, N.Y.
• Frank Pino, 29, of Elizabeth
• Lakisha Mensah, 24, of East Windsor
• Eraiadna Victoria Mentor, 23, of Linden

Items seized during the included:

• More than 2,300 grams of raw, uncut heroin; over 1,400 bricks of processed heroin with 50 bags to each brick; and more than 13,000 additional loose bags of heroin. The combined total of all the seized narcotics amounted to approximately 5.5 kilograms of heroin.

• Also seized at the Florida Street residence was a loaded, .40-caliber handgun with hollow-point ammunition, an extended 30-round ammunition magazine, a silencer, and a bulletproof vest.

• Along with narcotics, searches of the heroin mills also turned up thousands of unused folds for the packaging of drugs, plus ink pads, face masks, grinders, strainers, hundreds of grams of a cutting agent, and numerous cell phones.

• A 2002 GMC Envoy also was seized during the raids, and a search of the vehicle revealed a hidden trap door underneath a rear seat that opened and closed electronically; according to the investigation, the SUV was used to transport large quantities of heroin out of state for distribution.

According to the Union County Prosecutor’s Office:

Camino was charged with first-degree acting as the leader of a drug trafficking organization, first-degree racketeering, first-degree maintaining a drug manufacturing facility, first-degree possession of heroin with the intent to distribute, second-degree conspiracy, and two lesser drug offenses, with his bail set at $2 million by state Superior Court Judge Joseph P. Donohue.

Bryant, Gayle, and Sanchez all were charged with first-degree racketeering, first-degree maintaining a drug manufacturing facility, first-degree possession of heroin with the intent to distribute, second-degree conspiracy, and related charges, with bail set at $1.5 million for Bryant and $500,000 apiece for Gayle and Sanchez.

Juarez-Alvarez, Pino, and Mensah all were charged with first-degree maintaining a drug manufacturing facility, first-degree possession of heroin with the intent to distribute, and two lesser drug offenses, with bail set at $100,000 apiece. Mentor was charged with a second-degree weapons offense and third-degree conspiracy, with bail set at $75,000.