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For several weeks up to his arrest, Ruben McAusland, 26, sold the cooperator heroin made to look like Percoset pills, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said.
McAusland, who lives in the city and joined the department nearly four years ago, made several other sales to the cooperator beginning last October, Carpenito said.
The first involved more than three ounces combined of crack and cocaine and more than an ounce of marijuana, he said – all for only $50, the U.S. attorney said.
A month later, McAusland sold the cooperator a pound of pot for $2,500, followed by another pound, for $2,400, in January, he said.
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Several times over the past two months or so, McAusland sold the informant “individual pills that were made to resemble Percocet doses but were actually made of heroin” for $7 a pill, the U.S. attorney said.
On Feb. 11, McAusland met the buyer in his police vehicle at a supermarket parking lot near Paterson police headquarters and gave him four sample heroin pills, Carpenito said.
Several times afterward, McAusland sold heroin pills to the cooperator, he said -- including 1,010 pills of them for $7,000 on April 1.
Authorities didn’t say where they believe McAusland got the drugs.
Carpenito credited the FBI with the arrest and thanked the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office and Paterson police – including its internal affairs unit.
McAusland had a first appearance on drug-selling charges scheduled for Friday afternoon in federal court in Newark. Handling the case for the government is Assistant U.S. Attorney Rahul Agarwal, the deputy chief of Carpenito’s Criminal Division.
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