Italian drug trafficker arrested in Great Neck

An Italian man who was a key innovator in illegal narcotics trafficking in the 1980s, and who recently re-entered the United States illegally, has been arrested after dining at a Great Neck restaurant, according to officials.

Vincenzo Roccisano, 54, who served 18 years in federal prison on narcotics charges and then was deported to his native Italy, was arrested Tuesday evening outside the unnamed restaurant by Nassau detectives working on a federal anti-drug task force, according to court records.

Wednesday afternoon in federal court in Central Islip, U.S. Magistrate Arlene Lindsay ordered Roccisano held without bail after Assistant U.S. Attorney James Miskiewicz said Roccisano recently "traveled extensively through Europe and South America" and the government has "no idea where his actual home is." He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Roccisano's attorney, Randi Chavis, declined to comment.

Roccisano, who in the 1980s lived in Fresh Meadows, was convicted in 1989 in federal court in Manhattan for involvement in what then was a relatively new scheme in which large quantities of Colombian cocaine were smuggled into Europe and traded for heroin, and the heroin was smuggled back into the United States and Canada, according to officials.

The so-called "barter system" scheme took advantage of the relatively large quantities of Afghan heroin in Europe and the sparsity of cocaine there, officials said when Roccisano was arrested in 1989.

A federal prosecutor said Roccisano was affiliated with N'drangheta, the Italian organized-crime family predominant in Calabria.

Law enforcement officials recently learned that Roccisano, who was deported in 2006, had recently re-entered the United States and was living with his wife in Queens, according to a federal affidavit by Edwin Holmes, an investigator with the Nassau County district attorney's office assigned to the federal anti-drug task force.