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 that has been linked to robberies throughout New York City, Yonkers, New Jersey and Florida — and tied to an illegal gun used in a Fort Lauderdale heist on Dec. 9, the sources said.
The same gun was used in a $279,000 robbery at Solid Gold Jewelry in Manhattan on Nov. 22.
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 law enforcement source said of Navas, who was living in a taxpayer-funded city shelter after arriving in New York City last year.
Navas and fugitive suspect Victor Parra, another suspected bigwig in the network, made regular trips to the Sunshine State 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.
By Joe Marino, Steve Janoski and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon
