A truck driver charged with secretly hauling huge loads of pot for a major drug ring was busted for allegedly using Facebook to threaten the family of a co-worker who stole $30,000 in drug proceeds from him.
Edgar Encarnacion-Lafontaine is accused of sending online messages in Spanish warning that his ex-driving partner’s relatives were “in great danger” if he didn’t get his dirty money back.
One message said “even if you block us it does not matter because we will publish even on your town page what kind of traitors and petty-thieves are your brother-in-law and your sister and that is why they are going to pay,” Manhattan federal court papers charge.
Encarnacion-Lafontaine also allegedly visited the Brooklyn home of his ex-partner’s mother in October, two days after she found an unsigned letter under her doormat that said, in Spanish: “Avoid law enforcement, if not, you will not be able to save the family in the Dominican Republic.”
Encarnacion-Lafontaine, who had been free on bail, was ordered locked up yesterday after appearing in Manhattan federal court on charges including extortion and witness tampering.
He was previously charged in 2010 with conspiracy in connection with the feds’ Operation Green Venom, which shut down a cross-country drug racket allegedly headed by Manuel Geovanny Rodriguez-Perez, who’s accused of ordering five murders to protect his illegal business.
According to court papers, Encarnacion-Lafontaine previously worked for a trucking company that made deliveries for FedEx, and he was caught on wiretaps trying to arrange his routes so he could transport high-grade weed from California to New York.