A Queens high-school drug counselor and a teacher’s aide were arrested yesterday on charges of helping a strip-club owner run a multimillion-dollar drug ring out of his luxe Fifth Avenue apartment, authorities said.
Ken Kutin, who preaches drug prevention at IS 266 in Glen Oaks, was among 22 people busted as officials took down the coast-to-coast operation that specialized in the retro narcotic quaaludes, authorities said.
“He’s a disgrace,” said a teacher at the school. “This is just another black eye for New York City teachers. Bad apples like Kutin make us all look bad.”
The drug ring’s clientele included a woman who works for Donald Trump but who still stiffed the dealers for more than $14,000, according to court documents.
“There’s a rich girl I know who works for Donald Trump,” loan-sharking suspect Ralph Marazzo, 65, said in one of dozens of taped conversations authorities used to bust the alleged drug ring.
“She owes me $11,500, and $2,850 on the side that she can’t pay me. And these are rich people, rich beyond rich, and they have no money. And she works for Donald Trump.”
Marazzo, of Woodbury, LI, was a prime player in the $3.5 million operation that Manhattan strip-club owner Dennis Fairley allegedly ran out of his Fifth Avenue apartment. (Read the Complaint)
Also busted were Theresa Goldring, a teacher’s aide at PS 186 in Little Neck, Queens, and her husband, retired teacher Barry Goldring.
The three-year probe — dubbed “Operation Lude Behavior” — involved more than 100 federal and local law-enforcement officers. (Read the Complaint)
Authorities got their first break in November 2007, when a low-level arrest led them to Marazzo and several layers of suppliers and dealers, mostly on Long Island’s North Shore.
The methaqualone pills were sold for up to $35 per pill.
All of those arrested were released on bail, except Fairley, a chemistry whiz, who was held on $3 million bail.
Search warrants executed recovered tens of thousands of pills from a lab facility in Brooklyn, authorities said.
Additional reporting by C.J. Sullivan