Life In Fast Lane Crashes Into Prison

Running a family drug-trafficking organization in Fair Haven netted a dealer two race-cars, plane tickets to the islands, and as much cash as a federal judge had ever seen — then, in the end, 12 years in the slammer.

The drug boss, Bienvenido Gonzalez, 46, who oversaw a family business distributing multi-kilogram quantities of drugs, watched his life in the fast lane come to a crashing halt Wednesday when Judge Jeffrey Meyer sentenced him to 12 years in federal prison, followed by five years of supervised release.

Since at least mid-2015, Gonzalez, alongside his brother Antonio, bought cocaine and heroin in the Bronx, doubled the price, and with help from four more brothers, distributed the drugs throughout the Elm City.

“I have very few drug dealers who come into this courtroom who have made out quite as well as you have,” Judge Meyer said. ​“Just to cash in on hooking other people on heroin, you did that more than just about any other defendant I’ve seen in recent memory.”

Much of the debate between the lawyers about the length of the sentence came down to how much culpability Gonzalez had for the current opioid epidemic . Or, to put it another way, how much much he profited from the needles in addicts’ arms.

Thirty-three people in New Haven died from slamming heroin last year; scores more overdosed and lived.

With that death toll, prosecutors had asked Meyer to hand down a 151-month sentence, arguing that Gonzalez’s long criminal history and major quantities of dope he put on the street demanded a punishing response from the legal system.

Gonzalez ​“was putting poison into his community and helping to perpetuate the horrible heroin epidemic that is leading to more and more deaths each year,” Nathasha Freismuth, the assistant United States attorney, wrote in a memo. ​“His offense is a serious one that deserves serious punishment.”

In response, Gonzalez’s defense attorney asked for a 120-month sentence, arguing that his client shouldn’t be faulted for a national spike in opioid overdoses.

“The timing could not be worse. Not that there really is a good time to … be arrested for distributing heroin, but the use of opioids is now commonly deemed an epidemic and bullseyes are commonly painted on heroin dealers,” Charles Willson, a federal public defender, wrote in his memo. ​“The President even casually makes reference to the need for a death penalty for opioid dealers, although there is little mention of prison terms for the pharmaceutical companies and doctors who flooded communities with high-dosage pain pills.”

“The temptation exists to lay all that is happening in society, the entire opioid epidemic, at his feet,” Willson continued. But ​“trying to solve a complex, society-wide problem is not among the purposes of sentencing.”

Hard Family Questions

Wearing a long-sleeve white shirt, Gonzalez arrived in the courtroom shortly after 10:30 a.m. Wednesday to learn how Meyer would decide his fate. A thin mustache covered his top lip; wrinkles creased his eyes.

Gonzalez smiled at his family before marshals unlocked the handcuffs on his thin wrists. Ten supporters had shown up: his sister; his wife, brother-in-law and two step-sons; his two children and their mother; and two friends. Gonzalez’s mom and dad both died recently; he and his brothers missed the funerals while they were incarcerated. Wednesday was his son’s birthday.

After taking a seat, Gonzalez mimed a kiss to his wife. Waving his hand over his own close-cropped black hair, he signaled that his stepsons, who both had bushy afros, needed a buzz cut. Another marshal told him to face forward.

Before the sentencing, his wife, Janet Dishmey, said Gonzalez had been a reliable provider for her three children.

“He’s a homebody; he doesn’t have a lot of friends. He’s not dramatic, and he doesn’t like looking for trouble,” she said. ​“He was a phenomenal father and he still is.”

Dishmey said that Gonzalez drove her kids to school. He coached baseball for a local little league. As a sign of his civic engagement, she added, Gonzalez waited in line for three hours to cast a ballot against Donald Trump — a line that earned eye-rolls from the government.

Judge Meyer suggested that Dishmey had seen only one side of her husband.

“Families have to — and I say this to all families — they have to be prepared to ask hard questions of someone returning from prison. ​‘How are they doing? Are they actually changing?’ Because sometimes families don’t do that and allow them to get into patterns where they have mysterious sources of income,” Meyer said. ​“That’s how you ended up in a courtroom today. I hope you think hard about how you can take a different position with Mr. Gonzalez when you see him again.”

At the height of his operation, Gonzalez was slinging multi-kilogram quantities throughout New Haven. According to court records, he sold heroin only to those customers who could afford to buy it in bulk. Usually that meant a buyer had to take at least 100 grams — a $12,000 purchase, according to prosecutors, for which Gonzalez would pocket half in profit.

In total, both sides agreed that Gonzalez sold at least three kilograms of heroin. To put that in perspective, a first-time heroin user might snort 0.2 grams or inject 0.1 grams for a strong dose; a hard-core user would need to snort 0.5 grams or inject 0.4 grams for the same intense high.

Gonzalez was moving so much dope that he even hired an addict to sample the potency of each shipment. Last month, that tester, Carlos Santiago, was sentenced to 72 months in prison.

Big Spender

Gonzalez made tons of cash from the sales. He bought two drag-racers — and a freight-liner to transport them. He showed the speedsters off at the Pan American Nationals, where one clocked 175 miles per hour. Gonzalez also invested in a barbershop and traveled often with his wife and stepsons.

Those riches were strikingly different from what Gonzalez had in his upbringing. He and his 11 siblings grew up Puerto Rico in a two-bedroom house that lacked automatic plumbing. His father, a drinker, regularly beat his mother. And when Gonzalez acted out at school, his father whipped him with a stick.

When Gonzalez turned 18 years old, he came to Connecticut. He tried marijuana, cocaine, heroin, his attorney said. By the end of his teenage years, Gonzalez landed in court. Over the intervening decades, he’d be convicted 10 times, including on four drug-related charges.

In and out of custody, Gonzalez hadn’t worked at a legal job since 2010, when he quit his job at a factory. Authorities said they suspected Gonzalez had been selling drugs ever since — far longer than they’d caught him at, before they wiretapped his three cell phones in Nov. 2016.

After five months of listening to his calls, authorities arrested two dozen co-defendants in a major sweep, which stretched from Massachusetts all the way down to Puerto Rico. Agents raided Gonzalez’s stash house, where they found a kilogram of heroin in a dealer’s car, plus 400 grams of heroin and $10,000 cash elsewhere in the house.

Gonzalez has been in federal custody since, with only a brief reprieve to say goodbye to his dying mother.

“I Apologize”

On Wednesday, he expressed remorse for his actions. ​“At this time, I want to apologize to the community for the pain I have caused,” Gonzalez said in a brief statement, crying and breathing laboriously. ​“During the time in jail, I have been looking at the news and I’ve been seeing the opioid epidemic.”

Judge Meyer pushed him on that point.

“Did you understand, when you were doing all this, that the heroin you were selling was hurting people?” he asked. ​“What should I make of [the fact] that you were making so much money off poisoning people?”

Gonzalez turned to his attorney, who whispered to him for a moment. He then told Meyer that he had squandered much of the money on the slots at Mohegan Sun and cockfights in Puerto Rico. ​“That’s where I wasted the money I could have made,” he said.

Later, during the imposition of the sentence, Meyer questioned the idea that Gonzalez just discovered the damage he had caused.

“Respectfully, I don’t believe you suddenly learned about the harms by watching television or reading the newspaper once you were at Wyatt,” Meyer said. ​“Some people can be semi-functioning addicts. At best, maybe that’s what you were, but other people just go down the drainhole, and I do think you knew that.”

Meyer sighed. As family members leaned forward, resting their elbows on their knees, Meyer weighed some of the good that Gonzalez had going for him.

“It’s clear you’ve made an impact on this family,” he said. ​“But it makes it all the more puzzling how you couldn’t have realized you were harming and hurting and wrecking the lives of other people, whom you were exploiting with drugs.”

He handed down a sentence that’s two years longer than the mandatory minimum. Along with that lengthy incarceration, Meyer ordered Gonzalez to enter rehab, submit to drug tests, and enroll in an educational or vocational program during the five years of parole. He waived a fine, which could have topped $10 million, and instead imposed just a $100 court fee.

Five of the Gonzalez brothers have pled guilty, and one is awaiting trial. Ruben, a redistributor, was sentenced to 77 months in prison in January. The four others, including Antonio, are scheduled to appear before Meyer for sentencing over the next two months.