NEW YORK CITY, NY — Two Monticello residents were arrested as part of a regional heroin ring that peddled the drug from New York City to Sullivan County and beyond. The two men were identified as 34-year-old Jamaul Aziz and 22-year-old Gilbert Maxi.

They were arrested along with 11 other individuals and charged with conspiring to distribute heroin from New York City across state and county lines into Orange, Sullivan, and Nassau counties, as well as Pittsburgh, PA.

New York State Attorney General Eric Scheiderman announced the arrests at a news conference on March 26. He said “Operation Iron Horse,” so named because the drug dealers used trains to distribute their wares, began in June 2014.

Schneiderman said one defendant, Brian Bacon, who called himself “The Prime Minister,” is charged with operating as a major trafficker, and that is the only narcotics charge in the state that carries a possible life sentence.

Schneiderman said, “The tragic reality is that we are in the midst of a heroin epidemic in New York State—and the conventional wisdom that these drugs are confined to inner cities is clearly wrong.”

The indictment charges that Bacon sold up to a kilogram of heroin per month with assistance from his son and his girlfriend Donna Marie Haggans, who were integral to the packaging and delivery of the heroin to customers and resellers.

Bacon was also allegedly assisted by Wallace Walker, who called himself the “quality control officer,” who would test the potency of the drugs to determine how much they could be cut.

This was the third major take-down of a narcotics distribution network by Schniederman’s office in the last three weeks, totaling more than 60 arrests.

In the last four years, the attorney general’s Organized Crime Task Force has busted 24 large drug trafficking gangs, made more than 560 felony narcotics arrests, and seized more than $1.5 million, 80 guns, and more than 2,000 pounds of illegal drugs.