Route 110 heroin ring leader gets 9 years in prison, Nassau DA says

An Amityville man has been sentenced to 9 years in prison for his role as the leader of a narcotics ring that operated along the Route 110 corridor in Nassau and Suffolk counties, prosecutors said.

Branden Harris, 28, will also have 5 years of supervision after his release from prison, Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas announced Tuesday.

Harris pleaded guilty on July 3 to operating as a major trafficker and criminal sale of a controlled substance, Singas said. He was sentenced Monday. The district attorney had recommended 15 years to life imprisonment.

She said Harris was among 36 people indicted in April 2017 in a nine-month investigation called "Operation Bundle Up" conducted by local, state and federal law enforcement officials. Ten others were arrested later. All but one of the defendants has pleaded guilty to a drug offense.

The operation described as one of the area's largest narcotics takedowns ever stemmed from the Long Island Heroin Task Force, officials said at the time.

Harris ran the drug ring out of his home in Amityville and sold heroin in bundles of 10 glassine envelopes to customers outside stores along the Route 110 corridor at all times of the day, Singas said. Some of the heroin sold was laced with fentanyl, she said.

Singas said Harris and his associates made an estimated weekly profit of $40,000 to $50,000.

"Harris and his co-defendants turned a commercial corridor on Long Island into a heroin highway, where they sold thousands of doses of deadly narcotics every week," Singas said. "This brazen group raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars, but their shockingly overt nature and hubris ultimately led to their downfall."