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JC man caught with 3 kilos of heroin at GWB could be freed in 18 months

EXCLUSIVE: A judge in Hackensack on Friday approved a plea-bargained six-year prison sentence for a Jersey City man caught by Fort Lee police with six pounds of pure heroin for sale during a George Washington Bridge stop last summer.

Photo Credit: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia
Photo Credit: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia

While insisting that she was “not overlooking the seriousness of the offense,” Superior Court Judge Margaret M. Foti upheld the plea deal brokered with prosecutors by defense attorney Adam Lustberg, which could have 25-year-old Ernis Beato freed in 18 months.

“Dealing drugs in my view causes serious harm,” Foti said, “and obviously the societal necessity is to keep harmful drugs off the street.

“This is the way in which Mr. Beato was supporting his lifestyle and his family,” she added. “He had been chronically unemployed, and he’s a risk of committing another offense.”

The judge also noted, however, that prison would be a hardship on Beato’s 4-year-old daughter.

Lustberg said Beato shares custody for his daughter “and understands, frankly, what a good deal he’s getting.”

He called his client “a good person and a good father who did a very stupid thing at a time when he might have been desperate for money….He’s remorseful.”

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Kenneth Ralph said the plea deal demonstrates that “there has to be a penalty, and the punishment has to be more than just the cost of doing business.”

Beato was originally charged with four counts involving drug possession and distribution, including in a school zone.

He pleaded guilty to one reduced charge of possession with intent to distribute drugs in exchange for the six years. He could have been sentenced to 20 if he’d been convicted at a trial.

Beato was coming from Philadelphia in June 2014 when Fort Lee Police Detective T.J. Cullen, acting on a tip, stopped his Volvo on the eastbound Route 4 approach to the GWB.

Given permission to search the vehicle, Cullen found enough pure heroin stashed under the passenger seat to fill a half-million bags for street sale, authorities said.

Ernis Beato, Adam Lustberg, Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Kenneth Ralph (STORY / PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)

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