Metro

East Harlem ‘Scarface’ sent to prison; first sentencing in city under tough state ‘kingpin’ statute

East Harlem’s wealthiest — and possibly most arrogant — coke kingpin was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison today — where he’ll never see his pounds of gaudy gold jewelry or his framed “Scarface” self-portrait again.

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance hailed the tough prison term for multimillionaire Ceferino Perez as the end of a major coke ring’s two decades of poisoning the community and as the city’s first successful sentencing under the tough state “drug kingpin” statute — part of the 2009 Rockefeller drug law reforms.

Perez, 45, was a “mythic persona” in his neighborhood, and made $1 million a year — cash he noisily lavished on nine cars, a motorcycle, pounds of diamonds and gold and a framed picture of Al Pacino from the movie “Scarface,” with his own head superimposed over Pacino’s.

Despite his piles of treasure and cash — $300,000 was seized from his safe deposit boxes — Perez still made his wife work bagging cocaine. She “needed the money,” he was caught explaining on surveillance tape, authorities said.

More than 20 members of Perez’s drug ring have pleaded guilty in the case, the result of a 15-month joint undercover investigation by the DA’s Violent Criminal Enterprises Unit and the NYPD’s Narcotics Division, Manhattan North.

“Prior to his arrest, Mr. Perez devoted practically every waking hour of his daily life to the selling of cocaine,” assistant district attorney Christopher Prevost said at sentencing.

Each year, he flooded his neighborhood with more than 50,000 individual $20 bags of cocaine, in addition to wholesaling bulk cocaine by the kilo, Prevost said.

“Our goal with this prosecution was not just to take a few drug dealers off the street, but to dismantle one of Manhattan’s major narcotics distribution networks top-to-bottom,” Vance said after the sentencing, which he watched from the audience.

“And that is exactly what we’ve done.”