News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 1, 2007

Another Willimantic Heroin Ring Participant Pleads Guilty

MAR 1 -- June W. Stansbury, Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in New England and Kevin J. O’Connor, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that ISAIL REYES, age 27, formerly of Willimantic, Connecticut, pleaded guilty today before Senior United States District Judge Alfred V. Covello in Hartford to one count of using a communications facility to facilitate a drug trafficking felony.

This matter stems from an Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force (“OCDETF”) investigation dubbed “Operation SAPO,” which began in late 2004 and was spearheaded by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. On August 10, 2005, a federal grand jury sitting in Hartford returned and 18-count indictment charging 23 individuals with various narcotics offenses, primarily related to the distribution of heroin.

According to documents filed with the Court and statements made in court, beginning in the fall of 2004, the DEA began an investigation of Luis Camacho, a drug trafficker operating in Southbridge, Massachusetts. Following several controlled purchases of narcotics, including heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, from Camacho, a wiretap investigation of Camacho began in late March 2005. During the course of that wiretap, it was quickly learned that Camacho’s heroin supplier was Alfredo Aguilar of Willimantic. A subsequent wiretap investigation of Aguilar revealed that he operated an extensive heroin trafficking operation involving several other Willimantic-area residents, and that Aguilar was supplied with approximately one-half of one kilogram of heroin on a monthly basis by Jose del los Santos Rubio Betancurth of Hartford and Juan Carlos Velez of New Britain, which Aguilar and others redistributed.

According to documents filed with the Court and statements made in court, REYES was intercepted during the wiretap phase of the investigation in the summer of 2005 ordering cocaine from Aguilar, which REYES intended to redistribute to third parties.

Judge Covello has scheduled sentencing for May 22, 2007, at which time REYES faces a maximum term of imprisonment of four years.

On October 27, 2006, REYES was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida to 168 months of imprisonment for unrelated narcotics and weapons violations.

Aguilar has pleaded guilty and currently awaits sentencing.

This investigation was a collaborative effort of the Drug Enforcement Administration Hartford Resident Office, which included members of the Hartford, East Hartford, Southington, Manchester and West Hartford Police Departments, the Willimantic Police Department, the Connecticut State Police, Massachusetts State Police, the Southbridge, Massachusetts Police Department, the DEA Worcester, Massachusetts Resident Office, the State’s Attorney’s Office for the Judicial District of Windham and the United States Attorney’s Office.