Now here's something you don't read about every day: A sadistic group of eight men from the Dominican Republic were charged Tuesday, May 6, 2008 in a Brooklyn, New York federal court with conspiracy to commit robbery, drug dealing, and a number of other crimes stemming from offenses that began occurring in the spring of 2003 that targeted major drug traffickers in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Florida. The gang of eight from the Dominican Republic impersonated police officers in a complex scheme that involved the abduction and torture of several high-profile cocaine traffickers that forced the drug movers to turn over millions of dollars' worth of their illegal stashes to the fake cops over the past several years.
According to the real police and the unsealed federal indictment, the police impersonators committed 100 holdups of the drug traffickers in the aforementioned states, and injured as many people as there were holdups while committing the drug heists. The gang was "particularly sophisticated" in its tactics, and often kept the drug traffickers under close surveillance for several weeks before making their move in "police-style" car stops using handguns and vehicles outfitted with police lights and sirens. Sometimes the gang would burst into the dealers' homes after identifying themselves as law enforcement officers, and would hold the traffickers and their families hostage for several days--until they got what they were after. It wasn't unusual for the gang to handcuff its victims, or bind them with duct tape, after which they would conduct acts of torture while interrogating their captives. According to the indictment, sometimes the gang would simulate "drowning through repeated submerging of victims' heads in water for extended periods of time," and in at least one instance that occurred in 2005, a victim reported that two of the gang members "applied a pair of pliers to the victim's testicles and threatened to squeeze the pliers if the victim did not talk."
U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell said that the Dominicans' scheme "was breathtaking in the scope of its crimes and in the danger it posed" to the communities in which the crimes had allegedly occurred. The alleged abductions often led to shootouts between the gang and the purported drug dealers. When all was said and done, the authorities claimed that the gang had taken more than $4 million in cash from the dealers, and more than 1,650 pounds of cocaine worth an estimated $20 million which they turned around and sold, or arranged to have sold, on the streets of New York and other locations.
When the Dominicans were busted, authorities confiscated several kilos of cocaine, 20 handguns, handcuffs, police scanners, and cars with police lights and sirens allegedly used in the well-thought-out scheme. According to local District Attorney Robert Johnson, the defendants' alleged crimes consisted of a "dangerous dance of alleged criminals preying upon alleged criminals, who themselves profited from the desperation of drug abusers."
The eight men pleaded not guilty. If convicted at trial, each man could be sentenced to 40 years in prison.
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