New York Man Sentenced to More Than 10 Years in Federal Prison for Trafficking Heroin

Deirdre M. Daly, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that CARLOS GABRIEL ESTEVEZ, 24, formerly of Ozone Park, N.Y., was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Michael P. Shea in Hartford to 126 months of imprisonment, followed by five years of supervised release, for trafficking heroin.

According to court documents and statements made in court, in March 2013, the DEA New Haven Task Force began investigating a heroin trafficking organization headed by members of the Estevez family who lived in New York and the Dominican Republic.  The Estevez organization, including CARLOS GABRIEL ESTEVEZ, distributed wholesale quantities of heroin to customers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

On December 31, 2013, in response to court-authorized intercepts of calls and texts, investigators surveilled a co-defendant as he drove from Connecticut to a parking lot in New Rochelle, N.Y., where ESTEVEZ met him and provided him with two brick-like packages.  A Connecticut State Police trooper subsequently conducted a motor vehicle stop of the co-defendant as he was driving on I-95 in Milford and seized two bricks of heroin, each weighing approximately 500 grams, from a natural cavity in the vehicle’s wall.

ESTEVEZ has been detained since his arrest on September 11, 2014.  On December 8, 2015, a jury found him guilty of one count of conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute one kilogram or more of heroin, and one count of possession with intent to distribute, and distribution of, one kilogram or more of heroin.

Judge Shea found that ESTEVEZ was responsible for the distribution of at least 30 kilograms of heroin.

This matter was investigated by the DEA New Haven Task Force, with the assistance of the DEA Hartford Task Force and the DEA in New York.  The DEA New Haven Task Force includes participants from the New Haven, Hamden, West Haven, North Haven, East Haven, Branford, Ansonia, Meriden and Derby Police Departments, and the U.S. Marshals Service.  The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Geoffrey M. Stone and Brian P. Leaming.