Brook Casino in NH Helped Drug Lord and Mom Launder Cash, Feds Say

A drugs kingpin from Lynn, Mass. pleaded guilty Tuesday to flooding the Second Earl of Guilford Shore country with hundreds and thousands of fentanyl pills o'er a three-year period.

According to judicature filings, Vincent “Fatz” Enrico Caruso laundered at to the lowest degree some of his ill-gotten gains through and through the sportsbook at the Brook Casino in Seabrook, NH. He made habitue trips to the casino with his co-defendant and mother, Laurie Caruso, federal prosecutors said.

Caruso is accused of header upwardly a do drugs electronic network that manufactured and distributed fentanyl disguised as Percocet pills. These sold on the street for $10 to $12 each. His network of runners and distributors, which included his possess mother, also dealt cocain and marijuana.

The alleged gangster pleaded shamed to charges of conspiracy to fabricate and allot drugs, cabal to exercise firearms in a drug offense, using or carrying a piece inward furtherance of a drug crime, cabal to send robbery, and confederacy to send money laundering.

Caruso’s surgery had links to local street gangs the Tiny Rascal Gang and the Little Crip Gangsters. He bragged online near owning hexad anovulatory drug presses, including unity machine that could bring forth 15,000 fentanyl pills an hour.

Fentanyl is a synthetic substance opiate that’s cheaper and more powerful than heroin. According to the Massachusetts Bay Colony Department of Health, at that place were 1,895 opioid-related overdose deaths inward 2020, where a toxicology cover was also available. Of these, 92 percent were linked to fentanyl.

The potency for overdosing on the dose is mellow because a mortal dose can buoy follow as minuscule as 2 milligrams.

Washing inwards the Brook

Investigators obtained records from The Brook Casino. They found that Caruso, his mother, and another codefendant, Nicole Benton, had been betting handsome at its sports book using Benton’s VIP card.

According to FBI investigators, the Carusos and Old Bullion were deliberate to wager amounts at a lower place $10,000. This is the threshold at which a casino must register a currency transaction account (CTR) with financial authorities. They preferent accumulator register bets featuring favorites, because these offered heights returns on relatively low-toned stakes when i came in.

Between Feb and June 2021, the trinity placed 150 bets inward immediate payment totaling to a greater extent than $400,000. They missed more or less $20,000 during that period. But this meant they were able to covert $380,000 in allegedly muddied money into “legitimate” casino winnings.

‘Gangster Influencer’

Another defendant inward the display case is Ernest Johnson, known to his friends and social media followers as “Yo Pesci” or “Mr Live, Mr Drive.” President Andrew Johnson has become something of a “gangster influencer” on societal media for detailing his involvement in shootings, beatings, and do drugs trafficking.

The picture that launched Johnson’s cyberspace celebrity went viral because he was dig at patch filming himself inwards his car.

Caruso has prior arrests for firearms, nursing home invasion, robbery, assault, and do drugs offenses. He is closely connected to a rap music turnout called Epic Carry Nation the Label and was recently sentenced to 15 years in pokey for breaking into a dimension to sprout a medicine video with the group.

He faces 15 years to lifespan inwards prison when he is sentenced June 30