In the bustling city of New York, ordinary apartments are being transformed into clandestine Fentanyl mills, generating millions of dollars from the deadly drug trade.
The recent death of 1-year-old Nicholas Feliz Dominici in a Bronx nursery, which had been converted into a Fentanyl mill, has prompted authorities to reveal the telltale signs of these drug dens.
Recent law enforcement operations have uncovered Fentanyl mills operating not only in residential apartments but also in a nursery and a pizzeria. Bridget Brennan, the special narcotics prosecutor for New York City, explained to The Post that traffickers deliberately choose inconspicuous locations. "The goal is to not stand out," Brennan said. "Sometimes, workers in these Fentanyl mills go in and out at all hours. Apartment buildings are good for that since coming and going does not attract attention."
Inside these seemingly ordinary apartments, often secured with reinforced front doors, workers can earn up to $1,000 per day in cash. They handle Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid so lethal that ingesting just two milligrams can be fatal. The drug is mixed with other substances like heroin or cocaine, diluted with baking soda, baby laxative, or caffeine, and then packaged for distribution in and around New York City.
The ideal locations for these drug dens are apartments overlooking highways, which provide easy access to drug distribution points and minimize the risk of transporting illicit substances through city streets. Fentanyl arrives in tightly pressed kilo-weight blocks, sometimes coated in grease to evade detection. Once the blocks are opened, the Fentanyl is ground into a powder using coffee grinders, leaving behind a trail of burned-out grinders for law enforcement to find.
Frank Tarentino, the special agent in charge of the New York division of the DEA, described the typical setup of these apartments to The Post. "These are sparsely furnished apartments with the bare necessities. Usually, therell be a couch, a couple of beds sometimes, when the shipment is large, work gets done around the clock. Thats when people sleep between shifts rather than leaving. Maybe a PlayStation is set up. They need something to occupy their time when they are not milling."
The milling process usually takes place in the bedroom, while the operation's overseer manages things from the living room. "There will usually be a glass table, so they can see all the particles under bright lights," Tarentino said. "The windows are blacked out with black garbage bags, so no one can look in on what they are doing."
The apartments are often littered with powder, pill presses, take-out food, and metro cards used for scooping and moving the drugs. Glassine envelopes used for packaging the drugs and tape to seal them are also common finds. Most pills are stamped with various symbols, Brennan noted. "One we see is I-95. Thats the highway on which a lot of this stuff is transported to different locations. Theres been a Trump stamp and another with the Golden Arches, and the words Im loving it. That was for a guy who sold drugs in front of a McDonalds."
The raids on these mills often yield more than just drugs. Cash is frequently found, and in one instance, agents discovered a baby sleeping in a bedroom.
Despite attempts to purify the air with constant air conditioning and air purifiers, the efforts are usually futile. Brennan warned of the dangers not only to the pill makers but also to the investigators. "Weve had cases," she said, "where [the criminals] threw drugs at the investigator coming in." Being hit with a large quantity of Fentanyl can be lethal.
The mills can sometimes display a semblance of normalcy. "People wear K95 masks thinking that the masks will protect them from Fentanyl in the air; they probably wont," said Brennan. "But I remember seeing a mill where the masks were all hung up with peoples names on them."
In some mills, agents have found motivational artwork and personal items. However, Tarentino cautioned against assuming that the presence of professional lab equipment indicates a safe environment. "There is no quality control," he said, reflecting on the numerous Fentanyl-related deaths he has witnessed. "Theyre science experiments that go wrong every day."
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