Lindenhurst woman arrested in drug case

A Lindenhurst woman has admitted that on 20 occasions she picked up packages at a UPS store in Massapequa that she believed to be drug shipments from Arizona, according to a federal complaint released Thursday.

Stephanie Filippone, 24, picked up the most recent package Wednesday evening, and was later arrested after a high-speed chase along Sunrise Highway, according to the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Central Islip.

The arrest followed an investigation going back to August into drug shipments from the West Coast to the New York area using both the Express Mail and Priority Mail services of the U.S. Postal Service, the complaint said.

Both options "are increasingly being used to transport controlled substances to areas within the New York Metropolitan area," the complaint said.

Filippone entered a plea of not guilty when she was arraigned Thursday afternoon before Magistrate Thomas Boyle on felony drug conspiracy charges. She was ordered held without bail, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office said, and faces a minimum of 10 years to life if convicted of the most serious charge.

Last month, agents seized 10 pounds of cocaine in Chandler, Ariz., in a package being sent to Filippone's home address, the complaint said. Two other packages sent Wednesday to her UPS Store mailbox were intercepted under court order by agents from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the complaint said. Agents removed 4 kilograms of cocaine and replaced it with harmless material, the complaint said.

The complaint said that after Filippone picked up the packages at the UPS store on Merrick Road, she tried to evade surveillance units by speeding up. The units could not safely follow her, so they asked for marked Suffolk County Police patrol cars to pursue her car, the complaint said.

The chase lasted about 5 miles, police said, and ended when Filippone crashed her BMW in Lindenhurst, injuring a passenger in another car. Suffolk police said there were no injuries to their officers.

Filippone waived her right to remain silent and admitted that she rented the mailbox using a bogus home address "because she did not want the mail box to be traced back to her," the complaint said.

"Thereafter, she retrieved parcels from the mailbox on twenty occasions," the complaint said. "These parcels were always mailed to the box from Arizona. Filippone admitted that she believed that the subject packages contained drugs."