Indictments in N.Y. Point to L.A. as Cocaine Hub

In what law enforcement authorities described as more evidence that Los Angeles has become the nation’s leading cocaine distribution center, a grand jury in Upstate New York on Thursday indicted eight individuals on charges of transporting narcotics from the West Coast to the east.

Included in the indictment by an Erie County (Buffalo), N.Y., grand jury was John J. Battaglia, 60, of Van Nuys, an alleged member of an organized crime family in Buffalo and “the principal supplier” named in the indictment, according to Karel Keuker, an attorney for the New York Organized Crime Task Force.

Battaglia, who also has a residence in the Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., area, has been operating in Southern California “at least since 1988,” Keuker said.

New Phenomenon

The director of the New York task force, Ronald Goldstock, said the indictment “provided evidence of a relatively new phenomenon in narcotics trafficking; that is, the use of Los Angeles as a distribution hub of cocaine in the United States.”

In recent weeks, the Drug Enforcement Administration has reported a similar shift in cocaine trafficking.

“Approximately 50% of the cocaine that enters the country now is coming into Los Angeles for distribution to Miami and the East Coast,” said Ralph B. Lochridge of the DEA’s Los Angeles office.

He added: “The (Buffalo) case is illustrative of a new West-East direction in the flow of cocaine across the country--a shift in trafficking patterns that has made Southern California, and Los Angeles in particular, the nation’s major distribution center for Colombian cocaine.”

Colombia’s Medellin Cartel, he added, is shipping cocaine through established Mexican heroin and marijuana pipelines to Los Angeles. Colombian middlemen in Southern California then market the cocaine to distributors.

In the Buffalo case, prosecutor Keuker said that Battaglia had been an associate of the Maggadino Crime Family, based in that city.

Police Surveillance

He said that Battaglia’s alleged drug trafficking activities were uncovered partly as a result of “tight surveillance” by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Organized Crime Intelligence Division.

Last March 8, he said, the current case culminated when Buffalo police seized 1 1/2 kilograms (about 50 ounces) of cocaine in a Buffalo apartment, with a street value of about $70,000, which had been shipped from Los Angeles.

Arrested at that time and charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance was Joel S. Vizzini, 47, of suburban Buffalo, alleged to be Battaglia’s Erie County distributor, according to the New York State Police superintendent, Thomas A. Constantine. Vizzini was one of the eight indicted on Thursday.

Vizzini was observed early last March by Los Angeles organized crime detectives picking up cocaine in Los Angeles, Keuker said.

Also indicted were: Fabriborz Eslamieh, 35, of Hollywood; Michael F. Jacobi, 32, of suburban Buffalo; Patrick E. Granger, 39, a Buffalo attorney; Vizzini’s wife, Suzanne, 26; Vizzini’s son, Joel Jr., 25; and Randy A. Lanthier, 36, of Buffalo.