By Forum Staff
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz recently announced that 10 people have been indicted for their alleged roles in a gun-trafficking operation that conducted firearm sales throughout New York City, including Queens.
The defendants are alleged members or associates of the Tren de Aragua gang, which originated in their native country of Venezuela.
The defendants are variously charged in a 120-count indictment with criminal sale of a firearm in the first degree and third degrees; criminal possession of a firearm; criminal possession of a weapon in the second and third degrees; criminal sale of a controlled substance in the fifth degree; attempted criminal sale of a firearm in the first degree; and criminal possession of a controlled substance in the fifth degree. All of the defendants were charged with conspiracy in the fourth degree.
Six defendants were arrested last Tuesday. Two were apprehended out of state — Leoner A. Aguilera in Houston and Enyerling R. B. Zambrano in Miami — and will be arraigned at a later date.
Two defendants are in custody on other matters and will be arraigned at a later date. Enyerbert Blanco, the alleged ringleader, has been in custody in Florida since October after being charged in connection with a human trafficking case involving a 15-year-old girl. Oscar Sosa is in custody in Brooklyn on an unrelated federal firearms trafficking charge.
Two defendants have yet to be apprehended.
According to the charges and investigation, in June members of the Queens District Attorney’s Office and the NYPD’s Firearms Investigation Unit began an undercover probe into the trafficking of guns in Queens and elsewhere in New York City.
The investigation resulted in 22 different sales of guns, resulting in the seizure of 30 weapons, mostly handguns. Two AR-15 assault rifles were among those purchased.
Four additional weapons were seized last Tuesday, including two loaded semiautomatic pistols recovered from defendant Brayant Aguilar’s vehicle pursuant to a court-authorized search warrant. Two loaded semiautomatic pistols were recovered during the arrests of Wrallan Meza and Rosemary Sanchez.
Many of the weapons were sold in broad daylight including several transactions in a shopping center parking lot in College Point. In another transaction, an AR-15 was placed in a garbage bag and sold in the middle of the afternoon in the Bronx.
The sale prices of the guns ranged from $1,200 to $2,800.
To coordinate the buys, the defendants communicated on cell phones through WhatsApp.
The defendants had different roles in the operation. Blanco, Meza and Zambrano allegedly procured the guns from sellers, mostly in gun friendly states. Some of the weapons had been reported stolen in those states.
Oscar Sosa allegedly provided weapons to sell from his own inventory. Aguilera, Sanchez, Aguilar and Alejandro Rondon acted as the alleged couriers of the weapons.
Most of the defendants have been in the country since 2023.
The investigation revealed that the defendants discussed sending an inventory of firearms to Colombia in order to realize a bigger profit from their sales. The investigation thwarted attempts to traffic the weapons to Colombia.
Also purchased during the investigation were 48 grams of tusi or “pink cocaine,” a drug cocktail that is dyed pink and contained MDMA and ketamine. The defendants vouched for the drugs sold by saying they used them.
