NYC crew accused of fencing luxury cars, shipping them to West Africa
The defendants allegedly stole the high-priced cars in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, and sold them out of a showroom in the Bronx before putting the vehicles on shipping containers heading overseas, prosecutors said.
The buyers inspected the cars in the Longwood garage and paid in cash before driving them out. Many of the vehicles were found in shipping containers headed to Gambia and Ghana, authorities said.
In total, 72 cars worth $6.6 million, including a 2025 $425,000 Rolly Royce, a Porshe, and Lamborghini, were fenced in a nine-month investigation called 'Operation High Rollers,' officials said.
'This case shows the sophistication and scale of today's auto theft rings — stealing luxury vehicles across state lines, fencing them in the Bronx, and shipping them overseas. These are not low-level crimes; they are part of a multimillion-dollar black market that fuels violence and instability,' NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
Five of the eight defendants were arrested but all have been indicted in the scheme, prosecutors said. `They face several charges, including criminal possession of stolen property.
The defendants are:
Mamadou Camara, 29
Moussa Doumbia, 30
Arona Amadou, 35
Moubarak Djibril, 23, (not in custody)
Mohamed Kamara, 26 (arraigned on April 23 and released without bail)
Mouslim Ouedaogo, 32
Mamadi Sidibe, 24 (not in custody)
Amadou Fofana, 35,(not in custody
Submit tips to police by calling Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477), visiting crimestoppers.nypdonline.org, downloading the NYPD Crime Stoppers mobile app, or texting 274637 (CRIMES) then entering TIP577. Spanish-speaking callers are asked to dial 1-888-57-PISTA (74782).
Mira Wassef is a digital reporter who has covered news and sports in the NYC area for more than a decade. She has been with PIX11 News for two years. See more of her work here.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
California teacher stabbed in neck while on Italian vacation is returning home
With every beat of his heart, 29-year-old Nicholas Pellegrino felt like he was another pump closer to death. The religion and Spanish teacher at San Francisco's Archbishop Riordan High School was at the San Donato Milanese train station in Milan, Italy, and he was bleeding out. It was just before noon on July 15, and Pellegrino was supposed to be on a two-hour train heading southeast to Florence but was instead grasping for hope that an ambulance would arrive in time to save him. Photos taken of him on the station floor showed his chest and shorts soaked in blood. After 15 minutes, paramedics arrived and rushed the Staten Island, N.Y., native to a local hospital, where he somehow survived being brutally slashed in the throat. Authorities say the attack was carried out by a group of North African migrants. Now, more than a week removed from what he described as 'ISIS-level barbarism,' Pellegrino confirmed to The Times he had recovered enough to fly back to New York on Thursday. 'Miracles still happen,' Pellegrino, a professed Catholic, said in a phone interview Wednesday evening. 'I'm grateful to be alive.' The train ride was supposed to have been a small blip in Pellegrino's day. He was leaving one set of friends in Northern Italy to join another in Tuscany on what was an Italian vacation before the start of the fall semester. Within minutes of boarding the train, Pellegrino said he was surveilled by four men sitting about 10 rows away from him. When he put his head down, one slashed his jugular vein with a pocketknife while another stole his laptop, clothes and passport, according to Pellegrino. One also violently ripped off a gold cross hanging around Pellegrino's neck. The 'thugs were not afraid of me,' Pellegrino said. 'They were armed with pocketknives and had the intent to murder me.' Pellegrino thought he would die as he dragged himself off the train and to a nearby platform. The attack happened around 11:30 a.m., according to authorities. Pellegrino boarded the train at a previous station. He said he thought of two things in the moments after the attack. 'A, I was looking around to see where the suspects were just to make sure they wouldn't come around to finish me off,' he said. 'And then, B, I felt the blood literally pumping out of me with each beat and just hoped the ambulance would arrive on time.' Pellegrino was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he received emergency care to stabilize the wound, according to Italian medi. He was then moved to an intensive care unit, where he received nine stitches. He had been hospitalized there from July 15 to Sunday, then was staying with a friend until his flight to the U.S. The Italian newspaper Milano Today reported that two 21-year-old men were detained by police on suspicion of aggravated robbery. Pellegrino said he testified in court Wednesday and the pair were now facing more serious charges of premeditated attempted homicide. He said authorities found his gold cross and chain inside one of the suspect's intestinal tracts. The two hailed from Tunisia and are part of a gang, according to Milano Today. 'The police told me I was the seventh victim they attacked over a 48-hour stretch,' Pellegrino said. 'That's crazy stuff; that's something from a movie.' Although the alleged perpetrators fled the train platform, they were identified through CCTV footage, according to Milano Today. The two men were arrested attempting to board a bus carrying a switchblade and a stolen pendant, the news outlet reported. Pellegrino said two other suspects standing guard at the time of his attack were also arrested. Italian authorities did not respond to a call from The Times, nor did anyone from the American Consulate in Milan. With his passport still not recovered, Pellegrino confirmed that he was granted a temporary passport to return home. 'I was told these guys had previously served six months on various other small robberies,' Pellegrino said. 'These are evil people with bad intent.' Before working at the San Francisco high school, Pellegrino was a teacher and track coach at Monsignor Farrell High School in Staten Island, N.Y. One of his friends and former students, Finn McCole, set up a GoFundMe along with other former students of Pellegrino. 'We are setting up this GoFundMe to help Nick pay for any medical expenses incurred during his hospital stay, and to replace his lost valuables,' McCole wrote on the page. 'Finn's a great guy and a former student-athlete of mine and we're still friends,' Pellegrino said. 'I'm surprised by that amount of money, and it just goes to show that even though teaching is a thankless job, the students are craving and grateful for a role model.'
Atlantic
2 hours ago
- Atlantic
No One Was Supposed to Leave Alive
One night in mid-May, some of the Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States to a prison in El Salvador tried to break the locks on their cells with metal rails from their beds. It was a futile gesture of rebellion; no one thought they could escape. Still, punishment was swift. For six consecutive days, the inmates were subjected to lengthy beatings, three inmates told me. On the last day, male guards brought in their female colleagues, who struck the naked prisoners as the male guards recorded videos on their phones and laughed. The female guards would count to 20 as they administered the beatings, and if the prisoners complained or cried out, they would start again. Tito Martínez, one of the inmates, recalled that a prison nurse was watching. 'Hit the piñata,' she cheered. When the government of El Salvador opened the prison complex known as CECOT in 2023, the country's security minister said the inmates would only be able to get out ' inside a coffin.' This promise has largely been kept. The Salvadoran human-rights organization Cristosal has documented cases of prisoners being transported out of the jail for urgent medical care, but these inmates died soon after, before anyone could ask them what it was like inside the prison. What little is known about life in CECOT (the Spanish acronym for Terrorism Confinement Center) comes from the media tours staged by President Nayib Bukele, which show men crammed into cells with bare-metal bunkbeds stacked to the ceiling like human shelving. In most of the videos posted online, the men—some with the facial tattoos of the country's gangs—stand in silence. The Salvadoran government has encouraged CECOT's terrifying reputation, turning the prison into a museum where Bukele's tough-on-gangs tactics can be exhibited for the press. But media visits are also strictly controlled. Interviews with prisoners are rare and tightly supervised. On Friday, for the first time, a group of prisoners walked out of CECOT's gates as free men. They were 252 of the Venezuelans that the Trump administration had deported to El Salvador in March when it alleged—while offering little to no evidence—that they were gang members. This month, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro negotiated a prisoner swap with the United States, releasing 10 American citizens in his custody and dozens of Venezuelan political prisoners. In return, the Venezuelans in El Salvador were put on a plane and sent to Caracas. They brought with them detailed accounts of beatings and harsh treatment. (The government of El Salvador did not respond to a request for comment about their claims.) Four former prisoners told me they were punched, kicked, and struck with clubs. They were cut off from contact with their families, deprived of legal help, and taunted by guards. All recalled days spent in a punishment cell known as 'the island,' a dark room with no water where they slept on the floor. Those days, the only light they could see came from a dim lightbulb in the ceiling that illuminated a cross. I talked with Keider Alexander Flores over the phone yesterday, just a few hours after Venezuelan police officers dropped him off at his mother's house in Caracas. Flores told me that he and his brother left Venezuela in 2023, trekking through the jungles of Panama's Darién Gap and riding buses all the way to Mexico. They applied for an appointment to cross into the United States legally and arrived in Texas in August. Flores soon settled in Dallas and started an asylum application, but he didn't complete the process. He found work laying carpet. His real passion was music: He DJed under the name Keyder Flower. In one of his Instagram posts, he flexes his teenage muscles as he plays tracks by a pool. From the September 2024 issue: Seventy miles in hell In December, after a DJ gig at a house party in Dallas, Flores was riding in the passenger seat of a friend's car when they were pulled over. Flores told me they had smoked marijuana, and the police took them to the station. Later he was sent to ICE detention. At an immigration hearing, the judge told him that he wouldn't be able to return to the United States for 10 years, because he had broken U.S. law. When asked what country he wanted to be deported to, Flores said Venezuela. While in ICE detention, Flores learned that he had been flagged as 'an active member' of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Federal agents showed up to interview him, he said. They had seen his pictures on Instagram and said his hand signals looked suspicious. 'I was doing a cool sign, but they said it was a gesture of Tren de Aragua,' Flores told me. Flores knew about CECOT. He had seen videos at the ICE detention center in Texas, where the TV sometimes showed cable news. In mid-March, he called his brother from detention to say that he was about to get deported to Venezuela; two days later, he was put on a plane. ICE guards didn't let the passengers open the window shades during the flight. Flores and his fellow detainees found out they were in El Salvador only after they had landed. Another newly released Venezuelan prisoner I spoke with, Juan José Ramos, told me he'd entered the United States legally, with an appointment for an asylum hearing, and had barely settled down in Utah when ICE agents stopped his car on the way to Walmart, arresting him with no explanation. He said that when the men arrived at CECOT, they saw inmates wearing white T-shirts and shorts, heads completely shaved. Ramos asked a Salvadoran guard who these men were and why they were crying. The guard replied: 'That's you. All of you will end up like that. We will treat you all the same.' Flores, Ramos, and others I spoke with shared similar accounts of what happened next. The Venezuelans were taken to a wing of CECOT known as Module 8, with 32 cells, and didn't interact with the rest of the prisoners. The inmates communicated with one another via hand signals, because when they spoke, they were beaten. They slept on metal bunks, often without mattresses. Soap and juice bottles were luxuries afforded prior to visits by representatives of the Red Cross, who came twice during their four-month stay. Sometimes, the guards gave the prisoners better meals than usual, took pictures with their phones, then took the food away, Ramos, Flores, and others told me. A riot broke out in April, after guards beat one of the inmates to the point that he started convulsing, Flores told me. The incident convinced the Venezuelans that they had to do something. 'If your friend was being beaten, would you leave him alone as they beat him?' Flores asked me. Adam Serwer: Trump's Salvadoran Gulag Seven of the Venezuelans arrived days after the rest, deported from Guantánamo, where a hunger strike had broken out. They suggested doing the same at CECOT. Flores, Ramos, and others I spoke with said every inmate they knew joined the hunger strike, which lasted for several days. Some took their protest further by cutting themselves on the corners of their metal bunks. They called that a huelga de sangre: 'blood strike.' Three or four days after the strike started, two prison directors came to negotiate. The inmates agreed to end the strike in exchange for an assurance that the beatings would stop. 'They let us live for a while,' Flores told me. But in mid-May, when a few inmates refused to have their cells inspected, the guards beat them. That's when a second riot broke out. The guards responded by shooting the inmates with pellets. Then came the six days of beatings. Martínez, 26, told me he was pulled over while driving in El Paso, Texas, in February because his license plate had expired. The officer was ready to let him go with a warning, but asked Martínez to remove his shirt. Martínez had tattoos of Bible verses and the name of his wife. The officer called ICE. Martínez, who fell ill after the hunger strike, had to be taken to a clinic, where a nurse told him he had suffered serious liver damage. After the beatings, Martínez told me, some inmates vomited blood, and others couldn't walk for days. 'If they're going to kill us, I hope they kill us soon,' he said he told himself. The guards told him he would spend the rest of his life in CECOT. Until early Friday morning, when Martínez was sent home as abruptly as he'd arrived, he had believed them.
New York Post
3 hours ago
- New York Post
Ghislaine Maxwell preparing ‘new evidence' ahead of highly anticipated meeting with feds, her brother explains
Ghislaine Maxwell is assembling 'new evidence' to present to the feds when she meets with them this week, her brother told The Post. Jeffrey Epstein's madame never gave her version of events to federal prosecutors before her 2021 trial, which resulted in a 20-year sentence for recruiting women and underage girls for Epstein to sexually abuse. She also never testified in her own defense. 'She will be putting before that court material new evidence that was not available to the defense at her 2021 trial, which would have had a significant impact on its outcome,' Ian Maxwell told The Post in an email Wednesday. Maxwell, 63, is the lynchpin in the Epstein affair and one of the few people still alive who knows the names, times, dates and places of his entanglements — both in business and private. Epstein died in jail while awaiting trial in 2019. 8 Ghislaine Maxwell is busy assembling 'new' evidence in her federal prison cell that could see her exonerated, according to her family. Talk TV 'If she squeals on some of the people that she has videos on they won't be happy, ' former Epstein sex slave Virginia Guiffre alleged in an interview with Gayle King on CBS News in 2020. Guiffre, who took her own life in April, became one of the most prominent accusers of Ghislaine and Epstein after she had been recruited by the pair and worked for them until 2002, during which time she claimed to have slept with high profile men including Britain's Prince Andrew and 'a president with a Spanish accent,' according to court papers. '[Ghislaine] was vicious. She was evil. Put it this way, Epstein was Pinocchio and she was Geppetto. She was the guy controlling the strings.' 8 Ian Maxwell has long maintained that his sister is innocent and that she did not receive a fair trial in New York. AP 8 Teresa Helm, who works as an advocate for victims of sex slavery, testified against Ghislaine Maxwell at her trial in 2021. Alec Tabak Maxwell – currently serving her sentence at FCI Tallahassee in Florida – also knows a great deal about Epstein's holdings, according to court proceedings. Cimberly Espinosa, who worked as a secretary for Maxwell in the early aughts, called Maxwell Epstein's 'estate manager,' working on his various projects, including his private island in the Virgin Islands. 8 Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump partied with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell years before he ran for president. Getty Images 8 Ghislaine Maxwell pictured in a 2022 mugshot taken at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. At one point, Maxwell oversaw the shipping of sand and palm trees to the island, said Espinosa, who was a defense witness at Maxwell's 2021 trial and also testified she never saw her do anything untoward or illegal. Giuffre told an interviewer Maxwell organized the soirees and trips for the high-profile financiers and politicians who flew on Epstein's private plane and went to his parties. 'She was the booking agent,' alleged Spencer Kuvin, a Florida lawyer who represented some of the first victims of Epstein to come forward in 2007. 'Ghislaine would coordinate to get the girls for Jeffrey and his friends, and she would also make sure that his homes around the world were ready to receive him. She knows all the johns and she knows all of the victims, because she did all the dirty work.' 8 Ghislaine Maxwell's siblings have long said that their sister is innocent. Courtesy of Ian Maxwell Maxwell herself has always been reluctant to speak publicly and given few interviews. During a 2016 deposition in a civil case for defamation brought by Guiffre, lawyers criticized her for playing dumb — when asked about sex toys, she responded 'I need you to define a sex toy.' She also denied Prince Andrew had ever met Giuffre, despite appearing next to them in a well-circulated photo. Teresa Helm, a victim of Epstein, said she feels prosecutors will have a tough time getting the truth from her. 'She was crafty, successful and very articulate, and I think she's just going to make a deal to get released,' she said. Helm, who works as the survivor services coordinator for the National Center on Sexual Exploitation in Washington DC was recruited by Maxwell in 2002. She said she was recruited by Ghislaine, who didn't mention Epstein during their interview, then flew from Los Angeles to New York City. She says she was assaulted by Epstein upon arrival at his Upper East Side mansion, causing her to leave right away and return to Los Angeles. 8 Jeffrey Epstein and his longstanding lover and assistant Maxwell pictured in New York in 2005 Patrick McMullan via Getty Images 8 Virginia Roberts Giuffre called Ghislaine Maxwell the 'mastermind' behind the sex trafficking network started by billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. REUTERS 'I can't imagine that we are going to have to deal with another sweetheart deal that results in Ghislaine Maxwell getting released from prison,' she said. 'That would be tragic for all the women who survived.' Helm is referring to the slap-on-the-wrist plea bargain Epstein's lawyers negotiated in 2007, which saw him plead guilty to two felony prostitution-related charges, register as a sex offender and serve 13 months in jail. The deal came despite a Palm Beach police investigation providing evidence he had sexually assaulted numerous girls as young as 14. Epstein did minimum time under lock and key and was even allowed to be privately guarded at his Miami home during the daytime, and was free to travel internationally after completing his sentence. Maxwell, on the other hand, was handed 20 years in prison. She has insisted throughout that she was railroaded. Her lawyers have consistently argued she should have been covered by a non-prosecution agreement Epstein negotiated in 2007. On Wednesday, a federal judge in Florida shot down the Trump administration's bid to release a trove of grand jury transcripts from 2005 and 2007 connected to Epstein's case in the state. Maxwell is set to meet with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche imminently and also tentatively scheduled to sit for a deposition Aug. 11 to give further evidence.
