The fugitive ringleader of an interstate migrant moped gang that wreaked havoc in the Big Apple was busted by NYPD cops in the Bronx after three months on the lam, The Post has learned.
Victor Parra, 30, a bigwig in the ruthless crew that peddled stolen goods from the five boroughs to cohorts in Florida – and to contacts in South America, was nabbed riding a moped without a helmet last week and is now in custody, law enforcement sources said Monday.
The scooter had Texas plates, according to the sources.
Parra and Franco Alexander Peraza Navas, who was picked up by New York’s Finest in February, allegedly ran the operation from a Bronx apartment until investigators broke up the ring.
“Everyone wants to bastardize quality of life – lower level enforcement – but that’s how you create a safe and orderly society,” a law enforcement source said.
“Enforcing minor violations like helmet laws, [state Vehicle and Traffic Law], helps bring in bigger fish,” the source said. “We got the bad guy.”
Parra, a Venezuelan migrant, allegedly fled the city as cops closed in on the illicit operation, and was hiding out in Chicago and Miami before he returned to the five boroughs, the sources said.
That gang was so cocky that Navas boasted to cops after his arrest that, “In a million years I never thought you’d catch me,” sources told The Post at the time.
“It’s much bigger than me,” the accused migrant crook told detectives.
The two-wheeled crew was linked to heists in New York City, New Jersey, Yonkers and Florida – with Navas tied to two carjackings and six gunpoint robberies until he was picked up on a shoplifting rap at a Macy’s department store in Yonkers on Dec. 17.
Parra and Navas allegedly made frequent trips to the Sunshine State to unload the stolen goods.
Authorities said the merchandise was fenced through a Texas-based company owned by a Venezuelan husband-and wife team, with the proceeds linked to lavish spending, including the construction of a swimming pool installed in Colombia, the sources said.
The crew is also accused of smuggling migrants into the US illegally to join the robbery crew.
Some of the gang’s heists were caught on disturbing surveillance footage.
Parra is charged with possession of stolen property and other charges and is being held on Rikers Island on $50,000 bail or a $100,000 bond, online records show.
Two other people riding on the moped when he was busted were released without charges.
