Drug trafficking

Poughkeepsie cocaine-smuggling ring busted

From California to Nevada to Poughkeepsie and beyond, a drug-trafficking ring allegedly spread cocaine throughout the Hudson Valley and central New York, prosecutors say.

Members of a criminal drug-trafficking organization that called itself OTL, after the Nevada music corporation Outta They League, "distributed multiple kilograms of cocaine in and around Poughkeepsie, New York, and to other locations in southern and central New York" each month, according the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

The music business was a front for the drug ring, officials said in court papers.

Among the ways the cocaine was allegedly smuggled was in karaoke machines, according to court papers. In June, cocaine was detected in a box at a UPS story in Calabasas, California. Inside the box headed to a Poughkeepsie address was a karaoke machine with 2.7 kilograms (nearly 6 pounds) of cocaine.