Queens Drug Sting
BY LIZ GOFF & SUSAN CLEARY

Officers assigned to the Queens narcotics squad raided a College Point-based steroid ring on September 6 where a top female boxer, a former police officer and others were arrested for peddling performance enhancing drugs out of two Queens gyms, police said.

Police charged Cindy "Checkmate" Serrano, 25, the ninth-ranked junior lightweight female boxer and her husband and trainer Jordan Maldonado, 41, with the criminal sale of a controlled substance and grand larceny.

Law enforcement officials charged 24 individuals on drug-related charges as a result of an 18-month undercover investigation that focused on two gyms as well as 10 other locations. The Envy Us Gym, 126-19 20th Ave., College Point and the Powerhouse Gym, 35-09 Francis Lewis Blvd., Flushing were declared public nuisances on September 6 and ordered closed by Queens Supreme Court Justice Orin Kitzes.

Several competitive body builders were also arrested in the operation, including Gregory Kovar, 43, whose College Point condominium held a makeshift steroid lab where police seized a centrifuge, syringes, torches, gallon jugs of steroids, a bottling machine and a labeling machine. Police said the suspects emptied the jugs into smaller bottles, which they labeled and sold for $100 at the gyms. They also found 50 Oxycontin pills, nearly $40,000 in cash, a .357 magnum and a shotgun at his home. Sources said police believe Kovar was the rings kingpin.

"Half of what Kovar sold was fake," according to police. "He mixed the raw materials with oil, bottled and labeled it using the name of a company that had gone out of business, and sold it to people. People who bought this stuff had no idea what they were injecting into their bodies."

When detectives arrived at Kovar's Julius Road condominium in College Point on Thursday morning, he escaped from an upstairs window wearing only his undershorts. According to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Kovar was apprehended moments later on a neighbor's roof.

Kelly continued saying more than 60 undercover narcotic and steroid purchases were allegedly made among gym employees and members. Cocaine, Vicodin, Oxycontin, Percocet and Xanax were among the drugs sold. Many of the purchases were supposedly made inside the locker rooms, on the gym floor, in the trainer's office and near the front desk. "Our undercover detectives infiltrated this closed circle, a difficult thing to do," Kelly said.

Police said Maldonado, who was also manager at Envy Us Gym, sold vials of "real" pills and fake pills to boxers-intraining at the gym. Maldonado, a former Golden Gloves boxer who was featured in a 2000 Showtime cable TV film, "Bounce Behind the Velvet Rope," spent two years in prison on a drug charge. He faces 10 years behind bars if convicted of the current charges. Police sources said Maldonado got his wife, Serrano, to sell the drugs, but investigators have no evidence that she used the steroids. Serrano faces nine years in prison if convicted of the charges. She was released on $10,000 bail at her arraignment at Queens Criminal Court.

Also arrested in the undercover sting was Bayside bodybuilder Mario Godoy, 30, who police said appeared as a construction worker with a penchant for "meaty heroes" in a well-known restaurant's commercial.

Others charged included a New York City police officer Benigno Mercado, 40, who police said was dealing the drugs and Vikki Conner, 22, of Bayside, who peddled the drugs as she aspired to become an adult-movie star. Mercado was discharged from the NYPD in 2006 after he was stopped while driving a car with stolen license plates, police officials said.

District Attorney Brown said, "Far from being healthy environments for the body and the mind, the gyms were allegedly turned into drug supermarkets by many of the defendants who openly and illegally sold performance drugs wanted by body builders, as well as a cornucopia of highly addictive and potentially dangerous prescription painkillers and street drugs, in and around the two locations. Today, we issue a clear message- businesses that allow drug trafficking or other criminal activity to occur on their premises are at risk of being shut down and those breaking the law face felony charges and serious prison time."

It should be noted that criminal complaints are merely accusations and that defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty.