North Tonawanda Man Sentenced to 33 Months on Drug Charge
| U.S. Attorney’s Office February 24, 2011 |
BUFFALO, NY—U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul, Jr. announced today that Joseph Kozak, 28, of North Tonawanda, New York, was sentenced 33 months in prison by U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Arcara for his plea to cocaine related charges.
According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael L. McCabe, who is handling the case, Kozak was involved in a wide-ranging conspiracy to distribute cocaine in Niagara County and northern Erie County from 2007 to 2009. The defendant obtained cocaine from co-defendant Keith Simmons, the leader of a drug trafficking organization, and then sold cocaine to customers in areas north of the City of Buffalo. Kozak also stored and sold cocaine at an auto-shop managed by co-defendant Christopher Picone, on Payne Avenue in North Tonawanda, New York. Simmons and Picone have also been convicted.
The sentencing was the culmination of an investigation on the part of agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and officers from the Niagara County Drug Task Force and police departments in the City of Niagara Falls and Town of Amherst.