A career criminal and suspected illegal immigrant with a history of eight immigration violations, at least 10 aliases, dozens of prior arrests and fingertips sliced to obscure his prints was nabbed on heroin dealing charges by state police Friday, court records show.

Eddy Cabral, 53, was ordered held on $75,000 bail by Wareham District Court Judge Lisa F. Edmonds, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement placed a detainer on him for probable immigration violations, an ICE spokesman said.

Charged with drug possession with intent to distribute, conspiracy to violate the drug law and giving a false name to police, Cabral is due back in court Jan. 2

Cabral was arrested by state troopers in Middleboro on Friday after a monthslong investigation triggered by a suspected overdose death in Taunton last May, according to an arrest report. Police looked into an associate of the dead man, who was found unresponsive with a hypodermic needle in his arm, and began surveillance on a man they knew as “Morreno,” the report states.

Troopers followed a Buick linked to the defendant, which was spotted repeatedly in the Lawrence area in “an area known for narcotics distribution,” records show. Police observed what they believed to be drug dealing through November, and arrested Cabral, who gave his name as Jose Luis Vidal Perez, on Friday, and found three bags with about 10 grams of suspected heroin, the report states.

Perez then told police his name was Eddy Baez, and then later told them it was actually Eddy Cabral, records show. Arresting officers were unable to identify him by his fingerprints because the tips of his fingers had been altered, the report states.

“As I began to fingerprint Perez/Baez,” the police report states, “I noticed that his fingers appeared to have been sliced down the middle.”

The report states this trick is common among “career criminals” to make fingerprint identification more difficult. Criminal records searches turned up numerous additional potential aliases, including Eddy Beinvenido, Santos Cabral, Angel Torres, Martini Merejo, Santo Cabral and Axel Parilla.

Immigration officials know Cabral as Santo Cabral, a spokesman said, and a criminal records search turned up 41 adult arraignments for Cabral between 1990 and 2000, including multiple guilty findings for drug charges. He also has been charged with as many as eight immigration violations, records show.