Santiago Luis Polanco Rodríguez

Born in Santiago, Dominican Republic in 1961, Polanco-Rodríguez was raised in Manhattan after his family immigrated legally in 1969. According to the DEA, in 1982 Polanco-Rodriguez began developing a small group that sold high quality cocaine outside his apartment near the corner of Audubon Avenue and West 174th Street. American and Dominican law enforcement officials have different theories about how he began selling crack. One is that Jamaican gang members he helped organize introduced him to the drug in June 1985, a few months after it first appeared in Los Angeles. Another theory is that the Medellín Cartel in Colombia recognized Polanco-Rodriguez's marketing talents and taught him how to cook the drug. Yet another theory is that while on vacation in the Dominican Republic he accidentally created the drug and had his drug addict brother smoke it and began to sell it when he saw its effects. He called his product Based Balls and merchandised the drug in heat-sealed glassine envelopes. His sellers offered discounts on the weekends and distributed business cards inscribed with Cop and Go.[3] While doing this, he was building an empire in the Dominican Republic, hiring elderly women to hand-carry cash back to Santo Domingo. He laundered his profits through a wire-transfer storefront in Washington Heights as well as through a pharmacy, a nightclub and a finance company he set up in his homeland.[4]

Polanco-Rodriguez recruited widely among gang members around northern Manhattan, the Bronx and Flatbush, Brooklyn. He adopted the organizational schemes of the Colombian cartels: some employees cooked and packaged the drug, others transported and stored it, and others sold it on the streets. Others were organized into a hit squad to overpower and take drug spots from smaller but stronger gangs throughout the Bronx and Brooklyn. The DEA claimed that Polanco-Rodriguez's hit squad was responsible for at least five slayings, although there was never enough evidence to indict. His enterprise also included several family members. His half-brother, Chiqui, ran the operation when Polanco-Rodriguez was in the Dominican Republic.[5] A second brother, Elvis, delivered stashes to street locations, and a third, Santiaguito, was a cash courier. His sister, Dulce Elizabeth, and mother, Luisa Ordalina, counted the cash and maintained apartments where the crack was kept and produced. All are now fugitives in the Dominican Republic.

In 1986, the DEA began an anti-crack campaign in New York, rounding up hundreds of buyers and street sellers, many of whom became informers. [6] They led agents to Polanco-Rodriguez's headquarters at 2400 Webb Avenue and 2623 Sedgwick Avenue, in Kingsbridge Heights, Bronx. There, agents found bulletproof vests, automatic weapons, a gas mask and more than 100,000 empty crack vials. The operation was later believed to have been handed over to the much smaller but more ruthless Valera Brothers Organization along with the Bustamante brothers, Hector (July) and his brother Louis. In 1987, US Attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani signed a 58-count federal indictment charging Polanco-Rodriguez with drug trafficking, racketeering and money laundering. On July 3, 1987, Federal authorities announced they had successfully terminated the drug ring, which they described as the biggest distributor of crack in New York City. Twenty-nine people were subsequently arrested for involvement in the drug ring.[7]

He escaped to the Dominican Republic and is a casino owner.[9] He lives a lavish life in the Dominican Republic.[10]