There’s no business like snow business!
Six alleged cocaine traffickers were indicted yesterday for taking the name “the Great White Way” literally — wheeling more than 100 pounds of cocaine out of Times Square’s Crowne Plaza hotel, authorities said.
The drugs were recovered from three suitcases rolled out of the hotel like tourist luggage as cops swooped in last month. At 105 pounds, the coke would be worth an estimated $5 million on the street, they said.
The six men were indicted on conspiracy and drug-possession charges, said Bridget Brennan, the city’s special narcotics prosecutor, and Joseph D’Amico, superintendent of the the State Police.
The takedown began just after 6 p.m. Oct. 25, as state cops watched Fernando Alvarado, 23, of The Bronx, lift a suitcase with 30 pounds of coke into a silver BMW, officials said.
Alvarado got in, and the car sped off but was stopped near 50th Street and Sixth Avenue. and he and driver Gerinerdo Hernandez, 34, of The Bronx, were arrested.
Then, Luis Cuevas-Muniz, 25, of Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, left the hotel with a suitcase with eight pounds of coke and got into a livery cab that dropped him off a block away — sans suitcase, cops said.
He walked back and got a bigger suitcase, with 66 pounds of coke, and he, too, was soon busted.
A man he’d been talking to bolted, and a State Police investigator chased him through the Theater District but lost him in the Rockefeller Center crowd.
Meanwhile, the cab was pulled over at 57th Street and Eighth Avenue, and driver Roberto Alvarez, 37, of The Bronx, was also arrested.
Back at the Crowne Plaza, more state cops stormed the alleged traffickers’ hotel room and took in Kaleb Altiery-Vazquez, 23, of Winston-Salem, NC, and Juan Alverio-Ruiz, 50, of Toa Baja.