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NEW YORK (AP) — A drug gang went on a conspicuous spending spree that included buying a $3,000 Versace baby stroller and luxury cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Authorities announced drug trafficking charges against six New York gang suspects with ties to a Mexican cartel. They said the takedown also resulted in the seizure of four of the vehicles and a stash of heroin worth $900,000.
The defendants "not only lived a sham lavish life but trafficked hundreds of kilograms of this deadly drug in New York City," the head of the FBI's New York office, William Sweeney, said in a statement.
Papers filed in federal court in Brooklyn accused the men of smuggling large amounts of heroin from Los Angeles and Chicago to New York. The papers said they also traveled to Mexico to do business with the cartel.
During the investigation, agents seized more than $800,000 in drug proceeds, prosecutors said. Ohio state troopers discovered about $300,000 of that total hidden in a car rented at LaGuardia Airport in 2011, the papers said.
The men used the drug proceeds to buy the designer baby stroller, jewelry and vehicles including a Rolls-Royce Ghost that was painted bright red, a Lamborghini and a Bentley, the papers said. They boasted about their lifestyle and their purchases on social media, the papers said.
"We good in any hood," one posting for a group photo read.
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