TRENTON — A state grand jury has indicted 15 people for running a multi-million dollar drug ring based in Paterson that supplied heroin throughout the northeast, including northern New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C., state authorities said today.

The indictment, handed up Friday in state Superior Court in Mercer County, charges the alleged ringleader, Segundo Garcia, also known as "Moreno," 37, of Prospect Park, with moving about 2 kilos of heroin per week to other suppliers and large-scale dealers, the Attorney General's Office said in a news release.

The ring did not generally supply to street-level dealers, authorities said.

During the ring's take down in November, detectives searched 10 houses and one vehicle, seizing three kilos of bulk heroin, another kilo of heroin packaged for individual sale and about $255,000 in cash, the office said.

Garcia, a Dominican national, served more than five years in federal prison for drug dealing beginning in 2000. He was subsequently deported by federal immigration authorities, authorities said, but re-entered the U.S. illegally and established the heroin network.

He is charged with leading a narcotics trafficking network, which carries a sentence of life in prison including 25 years without parole, as well as other first-degree drug charges. All 15 defendants were charged with racketeering and conspiracy.

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