N.Y. - They spoke over the phone in code, hooked up with a
shady doctor to get painkiller prescriptions, and dealt pills and cocaine on
Staten Island and in Brooklyn, authorities allege.
On Wednesday, federal and city officials announced they'd
put a lid on an 11-person drug-dealing ring that included three Islanders.
The drug ring operated through three separate, overlapping
drug conspiracies, according to city Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G.
Brennan.
Investigators linked the three conspiracies through two
street-level drug traffickers from Brooklyn, Simon Berman 24, and Roman Vitkin,
25, and a nine-month wiretap investigation led to charges against both men, and
nine others.
One of those conspiracies got oxycodone prescriptions from
Dr. Zhanna Kanevsky, a Tottenville resident and Sheepshead Bay physician swept
up in a tangentially connected drug bust, according to authorities.
Dr. Kanevsky, who's already on state Health Department
probation for a fraud-related conviction, wrote scripts to phony patients for
about 100,000 oxycodone pills, prosecutors allege.
Some of those prescriptions went to Bella Zelenaya of
Brooklyn, who supplied Berman, authorities allege.
Berman and Vitkin also bought cocaine through another
drug-dealing group that involved three Islanders, prosecutors allege.
The duo was supplied by Anna Gleyzerman, 28, of Willow Lane
in Bay Terrace, and her boyfriend, Felikis Mazor of Brooklyn, according to
prosecutors. Mazor, meanwhile, got his drugs from Paul Santiago, 29, of
Mapleton Avenue in Midland Beach, and a third Islander, Alina Soroka of Normalee
Road, also sold cocaine as part of the conspiracy, prosecutors allege.
Police caught Santiago with a half-pound of cocaine in his
trunk in a Toys "R" Us parking lot in Brooklyn in April, and when
they searched his house in Midland Beach, they found three guns and drug
paraphernalia, prosecutors allege.
And when they raided Mazor's home, with Ms. Gleyzerman and a
2-year-old child present, authorities found an AK-47-style assault rifle, 5
ounces of cocaine, nearly a pound of marijuana and $6,400 in cash, prosecutors
allege.
The federal Drug Enforcement Administration headed up the
nine-month investigation, with help from the Amtrak Police and the NYPD.
Said Ms. Brennan, "These intersecting criminal
organizations bought and sold addictive pain pills as freely as they dealt
cocaine.
The four firearms seized during this investigation
demonstrate the potential for violence that is always present in the drug
trade."
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