Felix J. Cancel Jr., 34, along with his brother Jose Juan Cancel, bought bulk heroin by the kilo in New York, packaged and diluted it in "heroin mills" on Franklin Avenue and Fraser Place in Hartford, and distributed it through a network that reached into Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, federal authorities say. Jose Cancel is scheduled to be sentenced next month. In hundreds of telephone conversations secretly recorded by a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration task force, the Cancel brothers talked about making so much money that it required hours to count. Jose Cancel, known as Mingo, once was recorded telling a friend that over 14 years, he had personally sold $10 million in heroin. When the Hartford Police Department raided the Cancel heroin mill at 2 Fraser Place, Jose Cancel seemed -- during animated, subsequent telephone conversations -- less concerned with his narrow escape from arrest than the loss of 2 kilograms of heroin.
"Yeah, we threw ourselves through the window," he told his brother. "I threw myself out the window." About an hour later, he was still rattled enough that he didn't recognize a call from a man identified in prosecution documents as a cocaine dealer called Wito. "Who is it?" Jose Cancel demands. "Wito, jerk," Wito replies.
After the introduction, Jose Cancel complains to Wito that "the cops, the narcos took like 2 kilograms" of "Maria," slang for heroin. "Damn, what a loss," Wito says.
"There's like half a million in losses there," Jose Cancel says.
When the brothers were arrested with 18 members of their distribution network in March 2007, the DEA agents and state police detectives running the investigation seized nearly $200,000 in cash -- including $70,000 found in Felix Cancel's home at 21 Curtis St., $5,000 in his pocket and nearly $100,000 more stashed in a safe and in a safe deposit box. In a Christmas Eve conversation with an unidentified woman in 2006, Jose Cancel, who was then 34, sounded reflective on the high-risk, high-reward heroin trade. Everyone, he said, seemed to be calling him for drugs. In the coming year, he said he would apply himself to the business. He said he wanted to work hard, retire early and vacation in Cancun.
Jose Cancel told the woman he had already finished building his "mansion" and wanted to buy boats for his children. He said he had about $2 million saved, but wanted to increase the amount to $5 million. Worry about your health first, the unidentified woman scolded. Information collected through the telephone intercepts, as well as from surveillance and from informants, suggests that Felix Cancel was smuggling bags of cash to Puerto Rico where he invested, through straw owners, in real estate, vehicles and horses, federal authorities say. He also bought a house at 98 Porter St. in Granby, Mass. In his plea bargain agreement with federal prosecutors, Felix Cancel, who also is known as "Feilo" and "Gordo," agreed to forfeit the house to the government. He pleaded guilty on Oct. 17 to one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute one kilogram or more of heroin, and one count of money laundering. In addition to sentencing him to a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison, U.S. District Judge Alvin W. Thompson ordered him to submit to 10 years of government supervision upon his release. Federal agents had been trying to shut down the Cancel heroin operation since 2002, when the DEA sent a special investigative team to Hartford. But the investigation, according to a prosecution memorandum filed in federal court, was thwarted by the organization's "insular nature" and "counter-surveillance measures." The arrests were made after a more recent, 10-month investigation begun during the fall of 2006. The investigation utilized undercover agents, confidential informants, controlled purchases and court-authorized wiretaps.
Federal prosecutors said the more recent investigation showed that the Cancel organization "was responsible for the distribution of more than 1 kilogram of heroin on a weekly basis." The prosecutors said 1 kilogram of heroin can produce "approximately 50,000 single-dosage-unit bags, with an approximate street value of $500,000."
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