15 years for dealer in 'drug mill' case
Aug. 11—An East Hartford man with a long record of drug dealing, who was shot and nearly killed during a 2006 drug transaction, was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in federal prison for operating a "drug mill" in a Manchester apartment in October 2019, U.S. Attorney Vanessa Roberts Avery announced.
The sentence, imposed on Luis Ciuro, 37, by Judge Kari A. Dooley in U.S. District Court in Bridgeport, was the minimum allowed by federal law. Both sides in the case had advocated the 15-year sentence.
Nevertheless, prosecutor Nathaniel J. Gentile expressed pessimism about Ciuro's potential for rehabilitation. After reciting Ciuro's criminal record in his sentencing memorandum, the prosecutor wrote, "Ciuro has repeatedly demonstrated that he will turn to drug dealing whenever he has the chance."
The judge did, however, agree to a request by defense lawyer Robert Berke to recommend that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons admit Ciuro to its Residential Drug Abuse Program.
Success in the program can lead to a one-year reduction in an inmate's sentence.
In the program, which the bureau calls its "most intensive treatment program," inmates typically spend nine months living in a "pro-social community" separate from the general prison population and participate in half-day programming and half-day work, school, or vocational activities, according to the bureau.
Ciuro's latest drug conviction stems from an incident on Oct. 15, 2019, in which Manchester police received a report that a woman was yelling and showing a gun outside an apartment building on John Olds Drive.
Law enforcement officers had previously received information that someone was operating a fentanyl mill in an apartment in the same building, Avery said in a statement.
Responding police officers watched the building and saw Ciuro come out and put a black bag in the trunk of a car. After Ciuro and another person got in the car and left, officers stopped the car.
The bag Ciuro had carried from the building contained a shoebox that, in turn, contained some $70,000, and a second shoebox containing two loaded handguns, both reported stolen, Avery reported.
After Ciuro admitted to law enforcement officers that he used an apartment on John Olds Drive to store and process narcotics, a search of the apartment produced some 687 grams of fentanyl, 0.69 grams of PCP, 4 grams of psilocybin mushrooms, and drug-packaging materials, Avery added.
Gentile wrote that as little as 2 milligrams of fentanyl can cause an overdose and death. The prosecutor calculated that the fentanyl seized from the apartment could constitute some 343,500 fatal doses.
The penalties Ciuro faced in the subsequent federal case were increased — to a range of 15 years to life — because of his criminal record, which includes a 2008 federal conviction for conspiring to distribute crack cocaine. He received a seven-year prison sentence in that case.
The crack prosecution followed an incident in which a man shot Ciuro numerous times in a car on Park Street in Hartford in what authorities believe was an attempt to rob him and another man of crack and $2,300. Ciuro was wounded in the abdomen, shoulder, and arm.
Another man was also shot in the robbery, but neither of them would cooperate in the shooting investigation until they were arrested on federal crack charges of their own, authorities said.
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