https://www.syracuse.com/news/2019/0...ivers-too.html

Jayesh Patel was raised to run the family businesses.

He grew up in his dad?s motel near the Syracuse airport, and took it over along with a convenience shop his cousin sold him.

But Patel?s business savvy also helped in another venture: dealing crack.

When Patel?s customers needed drugs, they could swing by Munchies, the convenience store near the Syracuse-Solvay border. The owner, who went by Jay, raked in thousands of dollars there. He hid some of it under the frozen vegetables.

Still not convenient enough? Patel delivered. He kept a stash of crack in a hidden compartment he installed in the steering column of his truck.

No place to smoke? He had that covered, too. Come to his Econo Lodge. One frequent customer, a wealthy bank heir with a self-proclaimed $25,000-a-month crack addiction, spent so much time doing drugs at the motel that he listed it as his home address.

No money? Patel took payment in the form of welfare cards, which he collected as collateral from crack addicts who were too poor to pay up front. The bank heir paid in shares of stock.

Patel, 49, ultimately transformed two legitimate businesses owned by his family into a drug operation that made him more than $1 million over three years beginning in 2014, prosecutors say.

In October, he?ll leave the comforts of his $800,000 Liverpool mansion to surrender himself to federal prison for five years, going down as one of Central New York?s most unusual drug dealers.

Patel epitomized the American dream: He immigrated to the U.S. from India at age 10 and worked himself into the businesses.

He started small, a witness told a federal grand jury. Around 2013, the witness said, Patel began with selling untaxed Seneca cigarettes and some synthetic marijuana at Munchies. Within a year, he got into crack, selling $50 to $100 doses to multiple customers each day.

Why compromise the family business?

Court papers offer an answer: a woman.

Patel said his initial reason for dealing was to ?earn extra cash? for his girlfriend, a crack-addicted Munchies customer who he said he was only trying to help when he learned she was in an abusive relationship.

It started with offers to pick up her groceries or drive her kids to school. Eventually, they became romantically involved and he began smoking crack daily himself.

It was only natural that he learned quickly to be discreet. He dealt mostly in cash.

His family remained oblivious, Patel said.

The businesses were always a family affair, sprinkled with symbols of their Hindu religion: figurines of gods and Hindi phrases.

Both the motel and Munchies had been passed to Patel and his brother from other relatives. Patel?s dad moved them into the motel when Jay was in high school.

Everyone in the family was expected to pitch in, and Jay took it seriously. When his brother went off to college, he stayed to check in guests and do laundry, Patel said in court papers. (This story?s depiction of his family background comes from court documents he filed to argue for a short prison sentence.)

Jay helped his family grow the motel from 12 rooms to nearly 50. He was there when they joined the Econo Lodge franchise, hoisting the bright red, branded sign onto the beige strip of a building. He kept rooms filled as new hotel and restaurant chains sprang up along South Bay Road.

So when the U.S. government took steps to seize the businesses in April 2018, Patel saw it as a family obligation to confess. He pleaded guilty and struck a deal with prosecutors to forfeit more than $1 million ? and save the businesses.

No other family members were charged or accused of wrongdoing.

Patel?s lawyer, Dana VanHee, said his client believed he had been overcharged and that feds had collected more money than he?d actually earned from drug sales.

?Faced with the choice to go to trial and continue to put his family in jeopardy, he decided that wasn?t a battle worth fighting,? VanHee said in an interview.

Patel declined to be interviewed for this story. A woman who answered the door at his home said she would ask if he wanted to comment, and returned a moment later to decline.

While Patel claims his family was oblivious to his criminal enterprise, neighbors of Munchies knew something was up.

They called police to complain about litter, fights and unsavory characters hanging around, Syracuse police Sgt. David Proud said in an interview. Residents suspected someone was dealing drugs from the small storefront on Milton Avenue.

?It was sort of the neighborhood lore,? Proud said. ?A lot of buffoonery was all centered around there, a hub of bad activity.?

A stabbing and a shooting nearby, and an armed robbery at the store in 2016 made it more serious.

Syracuse police assigned a detective to investigate. For a while, the detective watched outside, observing as people went in and out. Customers too often seemed to leave the dingy bodega, with its deli counter and beer cooler, empty-handed.

Then people started to talk.

Onondaga County Assistant District Attorney Shaun Chase said someone contacted his office to tell them Patel was the troublemaker on Milton Avenue.

Police worked with confidential informants to buy crack from Patel more than a dozen times.

Soon, neighbors? calls had grown into a seven-month investigation that would eventually include the IRS and federal prosecutors.

In January 2017, SPD called in the IRS. Investigator Kelli Morgan followed a paper trail directly to Patel?s customers. They found people who were using Patel?s side check-cashing business at an unusual rate or customers who appeared to be spending $320 a week on groceries at Munchies.

When they arrested Patel, they found on him dozens of other people?s debit, credit, ID and public assistance (EBT) cards. Investigators said he would take them if his customers didn?t have the cash on hand for crack. As people racked up debts ? one had 84 transactions with Patel ? he?d sometimes charge them extra.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tamara Thomson said the documentation of Patel?s crimes, all there in his legitimate business records, was extremely rare for a drug case.

Investigators followed the money to one of Patel?s most profitable customers: a bank heir who paid for his crack in stocks.

Police had encountered the 60-year-old man before, court records show.

In October 2017, sheriff?s deputies were called to the Econo Lodge for a report of a man who refused to pay his taxi cab fare. Deputies found him in Room 120 with crack pipes and copper coils, and they arrested him. He told them he was a friend of Patel?s and complained about tickets deputies gave him.

?Can?t ya give me a break?? he asked police officers, according to reports. ?I?ve already spent 25 grand on crack this month. I can?t pay this.?

The man, who listed the hotel as his address, later failed to pay a fine for the charges. Patel described him in court papers as living in various hotels throughout Onondaga County and sharing drugs with a ?coterie of ?female acquaintances? and ?hangers-on.??

Over a four-month period, the man paid Patel for crack with 4,650 shares of bank stock worth more than $158,000, court records show.

Patel downplayed the payments, arguing they were for the man?s other expenses, like hotel rooms and loans to finance his elaborate lifestyle. He suggested the bank heir?s ?debilitating? crack addiction was no one?s fault but his own.

But prosecutors noted that addicts must get their drugs from someone ? and Patel, with his business acumen, was too eager to step up to fill that role.

The bank heir told prosecutors he?d wake up some mornings at the hotel to room service in the form of crack, an amenity only offered by Patel.

At Munchies, Patel gave new meaning to ?convenience store.? He created a one-stop shop for soda, snacks and crack, federal prosecutor Thomson said.

?He used his position in the community," she said, "to make it easy and comfortable for addicts to buy drugs.?