DRUG CACHE USED TO LURE TRAFFICKING SUSPECTS

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Wednesday, October 31, 1990

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

Federal agents in Newark used a cache of 11 pounds of pure heroin seized recently from a Saudi courier at Newark International Airport the largest haul of heroin imported through the airport to track down and arrest five persons believed to be major drug traffickers.

Assistant U.S. Attorney David Fernandez said the monthlong investigation, dubbed “Operation Desert Horse” because of its Lebanon distribution base, eventually yielded 9 more pounds of heroin and $162,000 in cash.

The Drug Enforcement Administration estimates the 20 pounds of heroin would be worth more than $10 million on the street after its purity was diluted.

“This is a tremendous, a staggering amount of heroin. This will have a noticeable impact on the availability of heroin on the street,” Fernandez said.
“The defendants here were at the very source of the stream. They were at the top of the pyramid because they were the ones receiving this very pure heroin from the courier.”

Facing charges of conspiracy to import and distribute heroin are Walid El-Homeidi of Saudi Arabia; Samir Tehfe, a Lebanese national who lives in Guttenberg; Mohammed Hamye, also a Lebanese national, of Long Island; Benny Rodriguez of North Bergen; and Carlos Solis Payano and Angel Payano, both citizens of the Dominican Republic and residents of New York City.

All the defendants, now being held in the Union County Jail, face maximum life sentences and $4 million fines, Fernandez said. U.S. District Judge H. Lee Sarokin on Monday ordered the men held without bail pending trial.

Josephine Chouberrian, 38, and her 26-year-old sister, Jacqueline Minassian, of Watertown, Mass., in whose home the additional nine pounds of heroin was seized, and Fouad Gharib, a Canadian citizen, are due to be transferred to New Jersey to face charges in connection with the case, Fernandez said.

U.S. Customs and DEA agents in Newark began investigating on Oct. 7, after inspectors noticed that the sides of a suitcase carried by El-Homeidi, 28, were unusually thick, said Robert Van Etten, Customs special agent in charge.

An examination of the suitcase uncovered about 11 pounds of packaged heroin secreted in its sides, Van Etten said.

After El-Homeidi’s arrest on Oct. 7, Customs and DEA agents lured Tehfe, 31, and Rodriquez, 52, to a hotel in Newark to pick up the heroin on Oct. 13, when they were arrested. Fernandez declined to say how officials were led to Hamye and the Payano brothers.

Caption: PHOTO – JOHN DECKER / THE RECORD – Customs agents, from left, Robert E. Van Etten, Mark Shanley, and Kathleen Haage at Newark International Airport with nearly $170,000 in cash and 11 pounds of heroin, the largest-ever drug seizure at the airport.

SOVIET EMIGRES HELD IN GLASSES THEFT

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Sunday, October 28, 1990

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

Englewood Cliffs police have arrested a Queens, N.Y., couple they suspect of belonging to a group of Soviet emigres who steal designer sunglasses in the United States to sell on Russian black markets.

Eduard Fridman and Victoria Feldmus were being held in the Bergen County Jail on Saturday, each on $6,500 bail. They were charged with shoplifting and possession of four pairs of sunglasses, valued at $996, taken from a store in Fort Lee, said Englewood Cliffs Police Capt. George Kirschbaum.

Kirschbaum said authorities in Union City have an outstanding warrant forFeldmus, 30, on a shoplifting charge.

Police seized from the couple two key rings with about 60 keys for display cases and a notebook containing addresses of optical stores in New York City, eastern Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

Kirschbaum said Fridman, 32, and Feldmus are part of a large, well-organized group that ships stolen designer sunglasses to black markets in Russia for sale at more than three times their U.S. retail value.

“I’m sure there are a lot of victims in Bergen County, people who sell designer glasses,” Kirschbaum said, appealing for people to come forward with information. “Right now, if they make bail, they are going to hit the street and disappear. But, if we have more charges, they might panic and rat out their friends. “

Vahe Casparian, the owner of Crystal Optics in Englewood Cliffs, said he called the police when the couple hurriedly left his store Friday after he had become dissatisfied with their answers to his questions. Casparian said he has been wary of walk-in customers since two gunmen came into his store in April, handcuffed him, and stole about $30,000 in merchandise.

Kirschbaum, Patrolman James Rice, and Sgt. Thomas Bauernschmidt arrested the couple as they boarded a New York City taxicab parked across the street from Casparian’s store. Police traced the sunglasses to Sunny Vision at 2500 Lemoine Ave. in Fort Lee.

Sun J. Yoon, who owns the Fort Lee shop, said that when the couple came to his store on Friday, the woman obscured his view while the man, who was eating doughnuts out of a paper bag, roamed the store. The couple then left, he said.

“I turned around and saw the display case was empty,” Yoon said. “Then the Police Department called me and said, `You lost some glasses? “

POLICE CHECK NABS 28, SNARLS GWB TRAFFIC

By Michael O. Allen and Corky Siemaszko, Record Staff Writers | Sunday, October 28, 1990

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

A police checkpoint on the George Washington Bridge netted 28 arrests for drunken driving and other charges, but was called off less than two hours after it started because of severe traffic backups.

Westbound traffic on the bridge’s lower level was merged into two lanes at 8 p.m. Friday while a contingent of officers peered into passing cars looking for signs of intoxicated drivers. The checkpoint one of several mounted this year was ended around 10 p.m.

Bergen County Prosecutor John J. Fahy called the roadblock the first at the bridge in two years a success and said his office will set up checkpoints on the bridge on a regular basis.

Twenty-eight people three from Bergen County were arrested on a variety of charges, including driving while under the influence of alcohol or other intoxicants, possession of controlled dangerous substances, and possession of drugs with the intent to distribute.

Bail amounts ranging from $250 for a 27-year-old East Orange man charged with driving under the influence and possession of drug paraphernalia to $25,000 for a Paterson man arrested on charges of possession of cocaine and drug paraphernalia were set at the scene by Fort Lee Municipal Judge John R. DeSheplo.

Most of the defendants were released on their own recognizance.

The checkpoint was conducted by the Prosecutor’s Office, Port Authority Police, Bergen County Police, and the Bergen County Sheriff’s Department. Police pulled over one of every 20 cars, but suspended the checks several times to let traffic through, Fahy said.

“The rule that we put in place was that if traffic backed up more than one mile that’s approximately 10 minutes we were going to let all the cars through,” Fahy said.

The roadblock was terminated when officials noted that traffic had not returned to normal after one of the suspensions.

Lt. Michael Koretzky, a Port Authority Police tour commander, said an accident two miles away, but unrelated to the roadblock, added to the backup.

“The last time we did a roadblock on the bridge, we were criticized because of long traffic delays,” Fahy said. “We were determined that that would never happen again.”

He said there had not been a roadblock in the past two years because of bridge construction.

NEIGHBORS SPAT GETS OUT OF HAND

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Saturday, October 27, 1990

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A04

A 31-year-old borough man was arrested Friday after he pointed a rifle at his neighbor’s head and then fought over the gun with him, police said. A shot was fired during the struggle.

Police Lt. Steven Nienstedt said the incident occurred early Friday morning when Jack Gordon of 135 Sylvan St. was confronted by neighbor Brian Murray of 121 Sylvan St., who objected that Gordon’s dog kept disrupting a party he was attending at 80 Highland Cross.

The third time Gordon went to retrieve the dog, Nienstedt said, Murray met him at the gate, and the men exchanged words.

Gordon then went into his house and returned with the rifle, placing its barrel on Murray’s forehead, Nienstedt said.

“I think we’ve got a problem here,” Gordon said, according to the police report.

Nienstedt said Murray and Gordon then struggled over the gun for about 30 seconds, during which the gun discharged. Neighbors called police, who arrested Gordon and seized the gun.

Gordon was charged with aggravated assault and possessing a firearm with the intent to use it unlawfully, Nienstedt said.

The lieutenant said it was unclear whether noise from the party disturbed Gordon, or whether he purposely released the dog. No one at the Rutherford police station received complaints of excessive noise from the party, he said.

SUSPECT IN BURGLARY SPREE WAS OUT ON BAIL

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Friday, October 26, 1990

The Record (New Jersey) | One Star | NEWS | Page B01

The chief suspect in more than 40 cat burglaries in four Bergen County communities over the past two months had been arrested on burglary charges in one of the towns in July and freed on bail.

Celious Lee Harmon of Teaneck, who was arrested Monday night on burglary charges, had spent nearly a month this summer in the Bergen County Jail after being arrested on burglary charges in Englewood, police said.

Harmon, who was captured Monday as he tried to flee from police at the Port Authority’s George Washington Bridge bus terminal in Manhattan, is fighting extradition to New Jersey, said Fort Lee Police Chief John Orso.

Police say that after Harmon posted $5,000 bail on the Englewood charges, he began burglarizing homes in Englewood, Englewood Cliffs, Fort Lee, and Tenafly in early September.

Orso said Harmon, 28, often rode the bus from New York City into affluent sections of the communities, broke into homes and stole valuables, and then rode the bus back across the bridge to the bus terminal, where he sold the stolen goods to support a crack cocaine habit.

Capt. C. Kenneth Tinsley of Englewood said that when the four-town burglary spree began Sept. 5, the Englewood Police Department knew who its chief suspect was. So did the Fort Lee Police Department.

“We knew who we were looking for because we had a set of footprints and a set of fingerprints,” Orso said. “We also knew he was traveling by bus between New York and New Jersey. “

The four communities formed a 30-person task force to track him down, but he eluded them. By the time he was captured Monday, he was suspected of more than 40 home burglaries in the four towns.

He was arrested after a chase by two Fort Lee and two Port Authority police officers at 180th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan.

Tinsley said that Harmon’s arrest in Englewood in July came after a chase. He allegedly had broken into a home in the East Hill section of city. Police also found property stolen from a residence on Gloucester Street strewn along the path of the chase.

Harmon was arrested in Fort Lee in 1985 and sentenced to five years in prison after conviction on three counts of burglary, two counts of receiving stolen goods, two counts for possession of burglary tools, and two counts of resisting arrest. He was also a suspect in 18 other burglaries in Fort Lee, Orso said. He was paroled in 1988.

TRUCK CARRIED OLIVE OIL, $5M IN COKE

By Michael O. Allen and Bill Sanderson, Record Staff Writers | Saturday, October 20, 1990

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

A routine police inspection of a truck carrying olive oil led to the seizure of 393 pounds of cocaine valued at more than $5 million, the largest drug shipment seized on New Jersey highways this year, officials said.

State troopers followed the truck when it left a weighing station in South Jersey at 8:30 a.m. Thursday and arrested four men as they unloaded the cocaine that evening in Edgewater. A fifth suspect was charged in Salem County.

State police spokesman Dan Cosgrove said Trooper Manuel Gordillo was inspecting the truck on Interstate 295, at Carneys Point Township in Salem County, when he noticed fluid leaking from the rear of the truck.

Gordillo saw the cocaine behind the olive oil after being permitted to search, but he allowed the truck to leave, Cosgrove said. Gordillo, members of the Statewide Narcotics Task Force, and Salem and Bergen County police then followed the truck to the Havana Potato Truck Lot on River Road in Edgewater, he said.

Superior Court Judge Marguerite T. Simon in Hackensack set bail at $2.5 million each for four of the suspects, identified as Gonzalo Castellanos-Arroyave of North Bergen, Milton G. Vera of Queens, Edson G. Pantoja of Miami, and Alejandro Lumus of Miami.

They were charged with possession of cocaine, possession with intent to distribute, and conspiracy and were being held in the Bergen County Jail Friday.

A fifth man, Lidio Ocana of Union City, the truck’s driver, was charged with the same offenses and was being held in the Salem County Jail on $2 million bail.

Cosgrove said the seizure was the first fruit of “Operation Roadside,” started with $478,000 in federal funds in July to combine state troopers and the commercial transport industries in a program emphasizing interdiction and public awareness.

Correction: CLARIFICATION: An article in Saturday’s editions reported that four men were arrested on drug charges in a truck lot in Edgewater. The company that leases the lot, Havana Potato Co., was neither implicated nor involved in the incident, state police said. (PUBLISHED, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1990, PAGE a02.)

MAN ARRESTED IN BERGEN WANTED BY FEDS

MICHAEL O. ALLEN | Saturday, October 20, 1990

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A03

A 30-year-old Israeli who was arrested in Cliffside Park on burglary charges is wanted by federal authorities for illegally reentering the United States, officials said. Eliyahu Shalom, being held Friday in the Bergen County Jail in Hackensack on $20,000 bail on the burglary and theft charges, was convicted of illegally entering the country in 1986 and was put on probation, on condition he keep immigration officials appraised of his whereabouts.

Deputy U.S. Marshal Robert Rosato said Shalom moved from his known address in Brooklyn without notifying probation officials, and he was deported to Israel in 1987.

A woman arrived at her Cliffside Park home Thursday and found Shalom there, police said. Shalom fled and was arrested in Edgewater. He is to be delivered to the U.S. Marshals Service after his case is disposed of in Bergen County, Rosato said.

N.Y. COUPLE ACCUSED OF DEFRAUDING COLLEGE

MICHAEL O. ALLEN | Saturday, October 20, 1990

The Record (New Jersey) | All Editions | NEWS | Page A04

A former assistant director of financial aid at Ramapo College of New Jersey and her husband were arrested Friday, accused of defrauding the college of $3,410 in financial aid grants.

Gloria and John Prentzel of Greenwood Lake, N.Y., were released on their own recognizance after arraignment before Judge Marguerite T. Simon in Superior Court in Hackensack. Prentzel was charged with theft by deception; his wife was charged with assisting a theft.

Detective Sgt. Fred Landsky of the state police Official Corruption Unit said he investigated the couple after a routine audit of the financial aid office by the Mahwah college showed that Mrs. Prentzel, 31, had approved a fraudulent financial aid application in the summer of 1989 by John Prentzel, 27, who was her fiance at the time.

Landsky said she approved the application despite knowing that her fiance listed a New Jersey address to lower his tuition fees, lied when he said he was a full-time student, and had annual income that made him ineligible for financial aid.

Landsky said Mrs. Prentzel resigned from her position at the college in September.

SATANIC CULT DIGS UP GRAVE; SECOND INCIDENT OF DESECRATION

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Thursday, October 18, 1990

The Record (New Jersey) | Four Star B | NEWS | Page B01

The graveyard with a single plot lies amid industrial buildings on Washington Avenue in Carlstadt, obscured by an overgrowth of weeds. But vandals managed to find the grave and dig it up Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, Carlstadt Detective Sgt. Michael Barbire said the vandalism was the work of a satanic cult the second time since last year that a grave has been desecrated by a cult. Last year, the gravesite of Thomas Fransen Outwater, one of North Jersey’s pioneer settlers, was torn up, and his skull was removed. Outwater’s grave is about 40 feet from the site of Wednesday’s damage.

Barbire said a worker in a nearby factory called police to report the vandalism at the plot, where a man named Henry Gordes was buried at least 100 years ago.

The hole “only goes down about four or five feet this time,” Barbire said. “As far as we could tell, we don’t think they went down deep enough to disturb the remains. Whether they were scared off or not, we don’t know. “

Barbire said only Gordes name was visible on the tombstone and that police would not dig up the stone to determine the date of his death or burial.

More disturbing to police was an inverted cross found stuck in the mound of sand at the head of the hole, Barbire said. The way the cross was embedded in the mound was indicative of a satanic ritual, he said.

The cemetery plot is on a strip of land owned by the Third Reformed Church of Hackensack. The Rev. Paul Janssen, pastor of the church, said he was unaware of the existence of the grave.

Last year, in the nearby Outwater Cemetery, vandals dug up the graves of Outwater and his wife and took his skull. His scattered bones were later reassembled at the Carlstadt Police Department and reburied during a ceremony in the town in July.

Caption: COLOR PHOTO – DANIELLE P. RICHARDS / THE RECORD – Carlstadt Police Detective Sgt. Michael Barbire at a gravesite that is believed to have been dug up by members of a satanic cult on Tuesday night.

CRASHES KILL MAN, JAM ROAD TO GWB

By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Thursday, October 18, 1990

The Record (New Jersey) | Four Star B | NEWS | Page B01

A Teaneck man was killed and four others were injured Wednesday morning in a spate of accidents that snarled rush-hour traffic along Routes 4 and 95.

“It was a mess,” said Sgt. Scott Storms of the Bergen County Police Departmnent. “We had multiple accidents on two of the main arteries going up to the George Washington Bridge. “

Authorities said Route 4 east was not completely reopened for about two hours after a 6:30 a.m. accident near Grand Avenue in Englewood in which a motorcyclist identified as Charles A. Getler died.

Shortly after the eastbound lanes were reopened, three accidents occurred within 15 minutes in westbound lanes, injuring one person.

Bergen County Prosecutor John J. Fahy said Getler was eastbound on Route 4 when he apparently lost control of his motorcycle. It slid along the road about 30 feet and ended up wedged under a disabled car, Fahy said. Getler was declared dead at the scene.

The Route 95 accident, at about 7:30 a.m., sent 50-year-old Victor M. Rivera of Perth Amboy to Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck with a neck injury and cuts on his forehead. He was listed in serious condition in the intensive care unit Wednesday.

New Jersey State Police Trooper Antonio Nunez said Rivera was northbound in a local lane of I-95 when his pickup truck was struck from the rear by a van driven by Hyun K. Shin, 42, of Elizabeth.

The pickup truck spun around into the center lane, facing oncoming traffic, and was struck head-on by a car driven by Anthony Pepe, 33, of Staten Island. Shin and a passenger in his van were treated at Holy Name Hospital and released. Pepe was uninjured.

Nunez said it took about three hours to reopen I-95 completely.

“Rubberneckers, that’s what delayed traffic more than anything else,” he said. “Plus, we had the emergency vehicles. “

About 20 minutes after Route 4 east was cleared of the motorcycle accident, at about 8:50 a.m., four westbound cars on the highway collided near Wilson Avenue in Teaneck. An unidentified motorist was sent to the Holy Name Hospital for treatment.

Two cars collided near the Route 4 intersection with River Road in Teaneck eight minutes later. Then, at 9:05, two cars collided on Route 4 in Hackensack, a short distance from the two accidents in Teaneck. There were no injuries reported in the last two accidents.