Heroin and Cocaine: Camden County, NJ, Man Gets 15 Years for Conspiring to Distribute Drugs

It's 15 years behind bars for a man from Camden County who pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute drugs in the city of Camden.

48-year-old Carlos Perez of Collingswood was sentenced to 180 months in prison on Friday, according to Acting U.S. Attorney Rachael Honig, to one count of conspiracy to distribute one kilogram or more of a mixture or substance containing heroin, as well as a mixture and substance containing cocaine, crack cocaine and fentanyl.

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According to court documents,

Nineteen defendants were arrested in late 2018 based on the FBI’s investigation of a drug trafficking organization that ran the open air narcotics trade on the 400-500 block of Pine Street in Camden for several months in 2018. ... The organization included street-level sellers who worked various shifts on the “drug set,” selling drugs to customers and collecting proceeds. The sellers were supervised by different layers of managers who, in turn, supplied the drug set with pre-packaged heroin, some of which was mixed with fentanyl, as well as cocaine and crack cocaine. Perez was a high-level supervisor for the drug trafficking organization and was responsible for obtaining powder cocaine from drug suppliers, converting or “cooking” the powder cocaine to manufacture crack cocaine and packaging the crack cocaine that was distributed on the Pine Street drug set.

Sixteen people have already pleaded guilty on charges related to this case; three defendants are awaiting trial.

In addition to the prison term, Perez was sentenced to five years of supervised release.