"YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE !!!"

On Thursday evening, January 30, 2003 a three month investigation into a major distributor of cocaine, marijuana and ecstasy culminated with the arrest of an individual who had escaped from a drug halfway house located in Newark, New jersey during May of 2000.

Detective Peter LoPresti of the Old Bridge Police Department had received information pertaining to an individual who was involved in the distribution of quantities of cocaine in the Old Bridge area. Utilizing undercover purchases and surveillance, officers from the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office Narcotic Task Force, the Old Bridge Police Department, the Woodbridge Police Department and the New Jersey Department of Corrections conducted an investigation of this individual's activities and ultimately arrested the individual as he returned to a Woodbridge Hotel, where he had been renting two rooms for the past eight months, spending in excess of fifty thousand dollars in rental fees. seized from his person at the time of his arrest: twenty-eight bags of crack cocaine and two thousand nine hundred dollars.

Further investigation by the officers revealed that this individual had also been residing at an address located in Fords, New Jersey. The execution of a search warrant upon this residence resulted in the officers seizing: three and one-half pounds of cocaine, one-half pound of crack cocaine, three pounds of marijuana, one hundred twenty ecstasy pills, a semi-automatic handgun, five "high end" luxury motor vehicles, and twenty thousand dollars in cash. Seized from a storage facility that the individual also rented were eight motorcycles.

The NJNEOA commends Detective Peter LoPresti, the Old Bridge Police Department Narcotics Unit, the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office Narcotic Task Force, the Woodbridge Police Department Narcotics and Special Investigations Unit and the New Jersey Department of Corrections for their relentless efforts and diligence in this excellent investigation.