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District Attorney Brown noted that “in a recorded phone conversation, the defendant was told he was selling drugs that contained fentanyl and that the drugs were killing people.”
By Forum Staff
A 46-year-old Astoria man has been sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to criminal sale of a controlled substance.
Bernard Lewis, 46 sold drugs to at least two people who nearly died of overdoses, and according to DA Brown, is just another part of
the skyrocketing crisis surrounding opioid’s and heroin currently plaguing the nation.
“Most troubling is that we are witnessing heroin being mixed with the synthetic drug Fentanyl,” said DA Brown, “a substance that is up to 50 times more potent than heroin. Many users are not aware that the drugs they are using are laced with Fentanyl and therefore much deadlier than just heroin alone. …the defendant in this case, was aware that he was selling a deadly mix to users.”
Lewis pled guilty to third-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance in April and was sentenced last week by Queens Supreme Court Justice Suzanne Melendez. His prison time will be followed by three years’ post release supervision.
As part of a long-term drug investigation in Astoria and Jackson Heights, which included the use of court-authorized wiretaps, Lewis had telephone conversations between April 6, 2017, and June 17, 2017, with six individuals who asked to purchase drugs from him. The deals involved exchanges of drugs for cash. The buyers in each deal were arrested and the drugs were seized and chemically analyzed for the presence of Fentanyl.
On July 19, 2017, a court-authorized search warrant was executed on Lewis’ residence and police recovered a large rock of Fentanyl, a box containing numerous empty glassine envelopes commonly used to package drugs and other paraphernalia, along with $2,900 in cash.
