DA, Police: Young kingpin ran large coke ring out of East Boston

Alleged kingpinA 24-year-old Colombian national is under arrest today on charges he ran a ring that smuggled large quantities of Colombian cocaine into the Boston area during the two years he was under surveillance.

Ferney Pereanez, also known as Alexis Land and Benito Valentin Rivera, was to be arraigned today in Suffolk Superior court along with seven alleged accomplices. Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley said Pereanez was arrested early this morning in his apartment at 22 Leyden St. He said police seized $13,000 in cash, two kilos of what appears to be cocaine and a US passport.

"This will put a serious dent in the amount of cocaine" in East Boston, Chelsea and Revere, Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis said at a press conference today with Conley and FBI officials.

Conley and Davis said Pereanez ran a sophisticated operation in which he never handled drug transactions in East Boston, Chelsea and Revere directly. Instead, he hired a large number of runners to sell the drugs - and if any were arrested, he would hire attorneys to make sure they were deported so they could not testify against him. In December, Pereanez fled the country, when he ran the license plate of a drug buyer and discovered a link to police, Conley said. But he returned to East Boston a month later.

Conley and Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, however, said an even more sophisticated effort brought him down. Working with $250,0000 and technical assistance from the FBI, local and state police monitored Pereanez's phone calls around the clock - at times, with three Spanish translators to handle all the calls. Police mounted hidden surveillance cameras in areas known to be frequented by Pereanez and his gang, allowing 24-hour monitoring of his every move, Davis said.

"Were it not for the Boston Police Department's new state-of-the-art wiretap room, we could indict runner after runner after runner for years and never make a significant impact on Pereanez's trafficking enterprise," Conley said.

Innocent, etc.