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Defendant Name, Crime, State Year
ALEXANDRU LUCIAN NICOLESCU, 41, a citizen of Romania, has been sentenced to 121 months of imprisonment for his participation in a 2007 Connecticut home invasion.
According to court documents and statements made in court, shortly before midnight on April 15, 2007, Alexandru Nicolescu and Emanuel Nicolescu, who are not related, and another individual, wearing masks and brandishing knives and firearms, entered a home in South Kent, Connecticut.
The intruders bound and blindfolded two adult victims and injected each with a substance the intruders claimed was a deadly virus. The intruders ordered the victims to pay $8.5 million or else they would be left to die from the lethal injection.
When it became clear that the victims were not in position to meet the intruders’ demands, the intruders drugged the two residents with a sleeping aid and fled in the homeowner’s Jeep Cherokee.
The stolen Jeep Cherokee was abandoned the next morning at a Home Depot in New Rochelle, New York. A few days later, on April 21, 2007, an accordion case washed ashore in Jamaica Bay.
The content of the case included a stun gun, a 12-inch knife, a black plastic Airsoft gun, a crowbar, syringes, sleeping pills, latex gloves, and a laminated telephone card with the South Kent address of the victims.
After a lengthy investigation, Alexandru Nicolescu was arrested in the United Kingdom in 2013 and extradited to the U.S. in 2014. He pleaded guilty to one count of attempted extortion and one count of conspiracy to commit extortion in 2016.
Alexandru Nicolescu’s co-conspirators, Emanuel Nicolescu and Michael N. Kennedy, also known as Nicolae Helerea, were arrested and convicted of various charges related to the home invasion. Emanuel Nicolescu was sentenced to 240 months of imprisonment, while Kennedy pleaded guilty to one count of attempted extortion and one count of conspiracy to commit extortion.
Key Facts
- State: Connecticut
- Category: Violent Crime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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