SHE WAS JUST MOONLIGHTING AS A COP

NYPD cop found guilty of running drug-trafficking operation out of her Bronx apartment

By John Annese

New York Daily News
March 7, 2019

A drug-smuggling cop who helped run a heroin-trafficking ring and tried to squirm her way out of an arrest by claiming she was “on the job” was found guilty by a federal jury Thursday.

Yessenia Jimenez, 32, and her boyfriend, Luis Soto, used her Bronx apartment as a stash house, where they kept kilos of heroin, fentanyl and cocaine they brought into the U.S. from Mexico, along with hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug money, prosecutors said.

She dealt the drugs in New York and Boston, but her operation came crashing down in January 2018, when Soto’s phone number showed up on phone records of a drug trafficking suspect from Queens.

In March 2018, after she and Soto found members of joint DEA and NYPD task force waiting outside their home after they returned from a trip to Massachusetts to meet a heroin trafficker.

The handle of her NYPD-issue Glock 9-mm. was sticking out of her purse, which was stuffed with $25,000 cash.

She told the task force agents she was “on the job,” which prosecutors took to mean she was claiming she was on official police business.

Soto and four other members of her operation pleaded guilty. Jimenez was convicted after a one-week trial in Manhattan federal court.

Jimenez, who was assigned to patrol city housing developments in the South Bronx, joined the NYPD in 2015.

“Simply put, Jimenez was a drug dealer in a cop’s uniform,” U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said.

Jimenez faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years behind bars, and a possible maximum life sentence.