A 28-year-old New Britain man is headed to federal prison for five years after investigators found roughly 770 grams of cocaine, along with drug-packaging equipment, stashed inside a storage unit he rented on West Main Street. U.S. District Judge Alvin W. Thompson handed Arnaldo Perez-Rios the sentence in Hartford on Monday, ordering 60 months behind bars followed by four years of supervised release.
That sentence was not a judgment call so much as a legal floor. Perez-Rios pleaded guilty on June 9, 2026, to possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine, a federal charge that carries a mandatory minimum of five years in prison and a maximum of 40, according to the New Britain Herald. Because the amount seized cleared that 500-gram threshold, Thompson had no legal room to go lower — he handed down the lowest prison term allowable under federal law, according to the Department of Justice.
The case traces back to May 2025, when the FBI Northern Connecticut Gang Task Force and New Britain Police began making controlled purchases of fentanyl from Perez-Rios, the station's report notes. The investigation shifted direction two months later: with court approval, investigators searched his storage unit on July 24, 2025, and recovered the cocaine along with packaging materials used to prepare it for sale. FOX 61 reports the 770 grams translates to roughly 1.7 pounds of high-grade narcotics, a quantity investigators say points to mid-level distribution rather than personal use.
A Year on Bond Before Prison
Perez-Rios was arrested on a federal criminal complaint on August 11, 2025, but he wasn't taken into custody right away. He was released on a $50,000 bond while the case moved through court, and he remained free for over a year — only being remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service after Monday's sentencing, per the Department of Justice. His guilty plea in June had originally put sentencing on the calendar for September 1, 2026, before it was ultimately finalized on October 5.
The prosecution fell under Operation Take Back America, a Department of Justice initiative that pools federal and regional resources to target drug distribution networks, cartels, and violent crime. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Reed Durham and Natasha Freismuth handled the case under the oversight of U.S. Attorney David X. Sullivan and FBI Special Agent in Charge P.J. O'Brien of the FBI's New Haven Division, the Department of Justice said.
Eight Agencies, One Task Force
The investigation itself ran through the FBI Northern Connecticut Gang Task Force, which draws officers from eight law enforcement authorities: the Connecticut State Police, the Connecticut Department of Correction, and municipal departments in New Britain, Hartford, East Hartford, West Hartford, Wethersfield, and Newington. That kind of pooled manpower lets local police departments tap into federal wiretap authority and investigative reach that individual towns don't have on their own.
This isn't the task force's first hit on a New Britain commercial address this year. The same unit, working with New Britain Police, recently dismantled a separate cocaine ring operating out of Supreme Automotive on Main Street, which led to a 12-year federal prison sentence for supplier Nelson Alejandro-Capo in May 2026, according to the DEA. Storage units and auto shops along the city's commercial corridors have repeatedly turned up as stash points in these cases, separate from dealers' homes.
Overdose Numbers Moving in the Right Direction
The broader backdrop to this prosecution is a modest but real improvement in Connecticut's overdose statistics. Statewide drug overdose deaths fell 26% in 2024, dropping to 982 total deaths, with cocaine-involved fatal overdoses falling from 723 in 2023 to 586 in 2024, according to data released by the Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and cited by the Connecticut Hospital Association. Fentanyl, meanwhile, remains the far deadlier substance on the ground — the same medical examiner data shows the synthetic opioid was involved in 78% of all fatal drug intoxications statewide in 2024, which is part of why task force officers opened this investigation with fentanyl buys before the cocaine seizure ultimately drove the charge and sentence.
