Cocaine dealer is accused of forging COVID claim, faces more time in clink

A convicted cocaine trafficker forged a doctor’s note claiming he had coronavirus to delay his prison sentence — and now faces additional time behind bars, prosecutors said.

Felix Santiago allegedly tricked a judge in December into postponing his surrender date by 15 days to begin serving 13 months for violating supervised release.

Santiago “falsified a COVID-19 lab report that he submitted to the court,” prosecutors wrote in a March 17 indictment for bail jumping and obstruction of justice.

As if that weren’t enough, Santiago also allegedly failed to show up to Fort Dix prison in New Jersey on the date Manhattan Federal Judge Denise Cote scheduled to accommodate his bogus COVID-19 diagnosis.

Santiago’s new charges carry a maximum sentence of 22 years in prison.

He was charged in 2009 with being a leader of a 17-person cocaine-dealing crew based in a

Jersey City restaurant, Calle Luna. The network distributed roughly $35,000 worth of nose candy a week, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

He was sentenced to nearly six years in that case for dealing coke and violation of supervised release while awaiting trial, records show. He was released from prison in December 2014 — only to be arrested five years later for conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

Authorities said they discovered “a pattern” in which Santiago traveled to Puerto Rico and then shipped cocaine to himself in New Jersey. Prosecutors eventually dismissed that case — but only after Santiago spent eight months behind bars. His travels to Puerto Rico and association with felons still represented a violation of the terms of his release in the 2009 case, so Cote sentenced him to 13 months — prompting Santiago’s ill-fated note seeking to delay his prison stint.