May 27, 2010
Office of The Attorney General
– Paula T. Dow, Attorney General
Division of Criminal Justice
– Stephen J. Taylor, Director
Media Inquiries-
Peter Aseltine
609-292-4791
Citizen Inquiries-
609-292-4925
Livingston Doctor Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison for His Role in a Major Narcotics Network
Six others sentenced to prison in Newark ring that distributed OxyContin
Livingston Doctor Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison for His Role in a Major Narcotics Network – Six others sentenced to prison in Newark ring that distributed OxyContin
TRENTON – Attorney General Paula T. Dow and Criminal Justice Director Stephen J. Taylor announced that seven people, including a Livingston doctor, were sentenced to state prison for their roles in a Newark-based narcotics ring that distributed millions of dollars a year in illegal prescription painkillers such as OxyContin.
The defendants sentenced yesterday had previously pleaded guilty to racketeering charges filed as a result of Operation Pandora, an investigation led by the New Jersey State Police and the Division of Criminal Justice.
The investigation led to the arrest in January 2007 of the leader of the ring, Mohamed Hassanain, 44, of West Orange, and 19 other members. All of the defendants have pleaded guilty. Hassanain pleaded guilty on July 31, 2009, while on trial, to racketeering and money laundering. The state will recommend that he be ordered to serve 18 years in prison when he is sentenced.
According to Director Taylor, Dr. Mario Comesanas, 53, of Livingston, was sentenced yesterday to 15 years in prison by Superior Court Judge Michael L. Ravin in Essex County. He pleaded guilty on March 19, 2007 to first-degree racketeering and second-degree distribution of narcotics for writing thousands of fraudulent prescriptions for the ring. Comesanas also forfeited $593,000 seized in his home and permanently forfeited his New Jersey medical license.
Judge Ravin yesterday also sentenced the following six defendants who served as runners for the ring, filling fraudulent painkiller prescriptions at pharmacies in order to supply the ring.
The cases were prosecuted by Supervising Deputy Attorney General Mark Eliades, chief of the Division of Criminal Justice Gangs & Organized Crime Bureau, and Deputy Attorneys General Mark Ondris and Paul Salvatoriello. Deputy Attorneys General Eliades and Ondris represented the state at the sentencing hearing yesterday.
Attorney General Dow credited Detectives Thomas McEnroe and others within the State Police Major Crime and Intelligence Units and detectives in the Division of Criminal Justice Gangs & Organized Crime Bureau North Squad. She also credited the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration New Jersey Division, the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, members of the NY/NJ High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas program, and the New York State Police for assisting in the investigation.
The investigation determined that Hassanain and his deputies within the ring provided several hundred names a week to Dr. Comesanas, who was paid up to $100 per name to write a “set” of prescriptions, including 60 OxyContin pills, 90 Percocet pills and vitamins for patients that did not exist or whom he never saw.
Hassanain’s cousin, pharmacist Ahmed F. “Felix”Aly, 36, of Union, knowingly filled the forged prescriptions at his pharmacy, RGN Pharmacy on Elizabeth Avenue in Newark. Aly pleaded guilty to racketeering on Oct. 30, 2009 and is awaiting sentencing. Prescriptions were also filled at other pharmacies.
Hassanain, who ran the ring from his home in West Orange and his business on Clinton Avenue in Newark, admitted that he maintained various “stash” houses around the Essex County area where he would accumulate tens of thousands of pills per week for wholesale distribution. At the “stash” houses, pills were packaged in bulk and individuals from the Bronx would come weekly to transport the narcotics and provide Hassanain with tens of thousands of dollars. The Bronx ring in turn sold some of the drugs to a ring in the Boston area.
On Jan. 25, 2007, the investigating agencies executed search warrants at 10 locations and upon five vehicles utilized by the enterprise. More than 40,000 narcotics pills, approximately $650,000 in cash, nine weapons, and thousands of prescriptions, both blank and executed, were recovered. The state seized $4.4 million in assets as proceeds of racketeering, including $3.6 million in real estate, a $95,000 Mercedes S-550 owned by Hassanain, and the $593,000 in cash forfeited by Comesanas.
###