New York Times Article Details Cournoyer Operation
If you ever wanted to know anything about the Jimmy Cournoyer case, an article in the New York Times titled, “The Rise and Fall of the Biggest Pot Dealer in New York City History,” which ran on September 5, 2014, is thorough and fascinating. Brought about in the news again because of the 27 year prison sentence Cournoyer recently received, the author, Alan Feuer, must have spent an immense amount of time collecting the information. Feuer even provided his readers with a visual; a map of North America complete with the smuggling route through the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation.
The article reads:
Mr. Paisse (pronounced pah-EES) also helped him [Cournoyer] make contact with a network of Native American smugglers at the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, who moved their own loads south across the St. Lawrence River, on small boats during temperate months and on snowmobiles in winter.
The reservation, which sits along the border of New York State and Canada, was a perfect corridor for shipping drugs to American buyers, and the Native residents who worked with Mr. Paisse had long experience in moving contraband, like firearms and cigarettes, through its skein of private docks. One of the Natives who took part, Kenneth Cree, lived in an immense house studded with surveillance cameras.
Also included, as many may well know already, is the fact that Kenneth Cree played a role in the demise of Mr. Cournoyer.
Paragraphs later the article continues:
It took a few years, but by 2010 the agents had persuaded Mr. Cree, who was facing a lengthy prison term, to work as an informant. According to Mr. Tiscione, they had Mr. Cree engineer a money drop at a safe house only blocks from the Brooklyn federal courthouse. Calling Mr. Cournoyer one day, Mr. Cree offered to oversee the shipment of $200,000 from New York to Los Angeles for a 6 percent commission. As part of the deal, he was given the phone number of a man in California who would take the cash on arrival.
When undercover agents in Los Angeles called that number, they reached a man named Alessandro Taloni. Mr. Taloni, court papers say, was an Italian-born associate of the Rizzutos who also served as Mr. Cournoyer’s manager for West Coast operations.
The article portrays an operation so big in scope that included the Bonanno crime family, Hells Angels, the Rizzuto crime family, the Sinaloa drug cartel, Mohawk smugglers and many other characters, you would think you were reading a movie script.
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