NEW YORK.-  Lillian Rivera (El Macho), 21, a Dominican lesbian known in Upper Manhattan as the "Drug Queen," will spend 25 years in jail on a State Supreme Court conviction handed down yesterday.

She was charged with heading a ring of narcotics traffickers who occupied buildings in housing project Dickman Houses in the Inwood sector.

“You’ll never again be the chief and that’s the problem with you is that you were accustomed to it," said judge Gregory Carro when reading the verdict.

The Dominican, found guilty of possession and conspiracy to distribute narcotics in May, interrupted Carro several times to proclaim her innocence.

Assistant DA Vera Varshavsky said Rivera and her accomplices had imposed a 10 year “kingdom of terror” in Inwood. Another defendant, Benny Garary, of the Bronx, was released after serving two years since convicted.

The trafficking ring, which dealt crack in housing projects, was caught after a months-long investigation with wiretapped conversations used as evidence.

The group handled its operations mostly from an apartment in the housing project and others in the Bronx to store the drugs, to sell in the streets of that borough and in Upper Manhattan. Its transactions took place in hallways of the buildings and made home deliveries by phone orders.

The prosecutors said undercover agents had bought drugs from five of the ring’s members since August 2007, identified las William Rivera, Mario Bracero, Candido González and Aaron Gonder, who face from 10 to 25 years in jail.

SOURCE: primicias.com.do