U.S. BREAKS UP HOME DELIVERY RING OF OFFERING DOOR-TO-DOOR COCAINE

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said yesterday that they had broken up an
extensive home-delivery cocaine ring whose customers included lawyers,
business executives and other professionals.

The ring, run most recently out of an apartment in Queens, used more than
100 cellular phones, pagers and six livery cars to take orders and deliver
the illegal drug at prices of $25 to $150, according to an indictment filed
yesterday in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

There were hundreds of buyers in apartments on the Upper East and West
Sides of Manhattan, Chelsea and SoHo, and in restaurants and bars
throughout the city, the indictment said.

In terms of the number of customers and frequency of deliveries, the case
was the largest ever brought by the Drug Enforcement Administration
involving a home-delivery cocaine organization, a federal prosecutor, Marc
L. Mukasey, said last week during a bail hearing for a defendant who had
been arrested earlier. But at the time, the authorities did not announce
the breakup of the ring, or issue any indictments.

Mary Jo White, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said yesterday that
cocaine use and distribution "is destructive of society, especially when it
becomes as easy to order as pizza."

Ten people -- eight of them drivers who made the deliveries, the government
said -- were charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Four have been
arrested, including the two men described as leaders of the organization.
The two, Jose Fernandez and Rafael Felipe, were arrested on Jan. 6 and held
without bond.

Yesterday, Magistrate Judge Sharon E. Grubin ordered two other defendants
detained. The prosecutor, Mr. Mukasey, told her that some of the other
defendants were believed to be in the Dominican Republic.

The indictment charged that the delivery service was run out of an
apartment on 27th Avenue in College Point, which the D.E.A. raided on Jan. 6.

Mr. Fernandez and Mr. Felipe were arrested in the raid. Mr. Mukasey said in
court yesterday that the operation made as much as $11,000 in a single day.

Agents also seized a notebook that contained the names and phone numbers of
suspected customers, the authorities said, but no customers are known to
have been charged.

One customer who was reached by phone said he had learned about the service
from a friend and had used it "more than a few times" over the past year.
He would only speak on the condition of anonymity and said that the service
was "very erratic."

Lawyers for Mr. Fernandez and Mr. Felipe both said yesterday that their
clients would plead not guilty.

Mr. Fernandez's lawyer, Vincent D. Scala, said that to the best of his
knowledge "there were never any narcotics recovered" by the authorities,
and his client was "waiting to see whether or not the government had proof
and evidence to support what they are alleging." The government did not say
whether any drugs were found in the apartment, and a spokesman would not
comment.

Carl S. Spector, the lawyer for Mr. Felipe, said: "The government's
allegations are quite grandiose. Whether or not they can prove any of the
charges, time can only tell."

As described in government filings, a typical purchase worked this way: a
customer called one of the organization's pagers, and Mr. Fernandez or
another defendant returned the call, often using a cellular phone
registered under a false name.

The service offered three quantities of cocaine: small, about half a gram,
for $25; medium, about a gram, for $50; and large, about 3 grams, for $150,
the indictment said. A delivery person, posing as a livery driver, carried
the order to the customer, the indictment said.

Prosecutors said no legitimate business was done by the drivers. One
customer was overhead on wiretaps asking whether the driver could, after
delivering the cocaine, take him to an address. The customer was told that
the drivers did not do that.