Gang big: 'It's bigger than me'
The migrant moped gangs terrorizing the Big Apple are part of an illicit network of hoods peddling stolen goods from the five boroughs in Florida — and shipping the proceeds to South America, law enforcement sources told The Post.
“It’s much bigger than me,” accused migrant ringleader Franco Alexander Peraza Navas allegedly told the NYPD after getting nabbed for a string of local heists.
“In a million years, I never thought you’d catch me,” Navas, 30, allegedly told detectives. “I’ve been going to Miami every three weeks. And it’s much bigger than me.”
The Venezuelan migrant is allegedly part of a crew linked to robberies in New York City, Yonkers, New Jersey and Florida — and tied to an illegal gun used in a Fort Lauderdale armed heist on Dec. 9, sources said.
The same gun was used in a $279,000 gunpoint robbery at Solid Gold Jewelry in Manhattan Nov. 22.
‘Nasty as they come’
Navas and his alleged accomplices are suspected in other Big Apple incidents, including a shootout with another crew in The Bronx on Nov. 18 and a Bergen County robbery that is still under investigation.
In all, cops pinned two carjackings and six gunpoint robberies or attempted robberies on Navas when he was finally nabbed while allegedly shoplifting at a Macy’s department store in Yonkers on Dec. 17 — all pulled off within the previous five months, the sources said.
“Nasty as they come,” one lawenforcement source said of Navas, who was living in a taxpayerfunded city shelter after arriving in New York City last year.
Navas and Victor Parra, another suspected bigwig in the network, made regular trips to Florida to unload the proceeds from the New York robberies, the sources said.
Parra allegedly ran the local ring out of a Bronx apartment, where stolen phones were reportedly hacked — with gang members advised to throw the phones out the window if cops closed in and to ship him clothes to Miami if he had to go on the run, according to the sources.
The pilfered phones, along with cash and other stolen goods, were shipped to Colombia through a Texas-based shipping company run by a Venezuelan husband and wife team.
When cops raided the Bronx apartment they were stunned by the complexity of the operation, including a food delivery from the apartment that ended up with a bill from Colombia — where the proceeds were eventually used to order a swimming pool, the sources said.
Parra’s crew also allegedly helped smuggle migrants into the US, with traffickers still owed big bucks for the illegal border crossings, the sources said. Migrants were shown pho
tos of their families back in South America and told they would be killed if the bills weren’t paid, according to the sources.
While Parra remains on the run, Navas is now in federal custody facing charges of carjacking, car theft and interference with commerce by threat or violence, court records show.
For New Yorkers, the international crime ring begins with brazen robberies by migrants on mopeds, with the crew run by Navas and Parra just one part of the violent spree. Police have identified at least 32 separate grand larceny patterns in the boroughs that account for more than 140 separate crimes, the sources said.