A 72\u2011year\u2011old Hauppauge man has been indicted by the Suffolk County District Attorney\u2019s Office for allegedly selling fentanyl that led to the death of another man.<\/p>\n
Michael Dirago is charged with several counts of criminal sale of a controlled substance.<\/p>\n
District Attorney Ray Tierney said he was disappointed he could not use Chelsey\u2019s Law to prosecute the case as manslaughter. \u201cI urge the legislature to wake up and pass it,\u201d Tierney said.<\/p>\n
The bill is currently in Assembly committee. <\/p>\n
In September 2024, Suffolk County police responded to a report of a drug overdose at a home in Mastic. Officers pronounced the 53\u2011year\u2011old victim dead at the scene. An autopsy later determined the cause of death was acute mixed drug intoxication involving fentanyl and xylazine.<\/p>\n
Several months later, in February, police received a tip related to the overdose and assembled the East End Drug Task Force – a multi\u2011agency group – to investigate. Detectives learned that the day before the fatal overdose, the victim had been communicating with a phone number saved as \u201cMike Gangster,\u201d which was later identified as Dirago.<\/p>\n
In 2026, an undercover officer allegedly purchased 999 pills from Dirago. Prosecutors say the pills contained fentanyl, along with other substances commonly used by dealers as cutting agents to increase profits.<\/p>\n
On April 16, members of the East End Drug Task Force executed a search warrant at Dirago\u2019s residence, recovering approximately 500 pills and $27,964 in cash. The seized pills also tested positive for fentanyl.<\/p>\n
Dirago is expected to return to court on May 12. <\/p>\n
If convicted on the top count, he faces up to 20 years in prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 72\u2011year\u2011old Hauppauge man has been indicted by the Suffolk County District Attorney\u2019s Office for allegedly selling fentanyl…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213011,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-213010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}