A Port Jefferson Station man who sold fentanyl and cocaine to an undercover police officer while he was on parole has been sentenced to 45 years in prison in Suffolk County, New York — one of the longest sentences handed down in the county this year for street-level drug sales, and a case prosecutors presented as a warning about repeat violent offenders returning to dealing.
Nicholas Cox, 36, of Port Jefferson Station, received the sentence on Wednesday, October 28, from Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Steven A. Pilewski, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney. The sentence followed a jury conviction in September and was imposed on Cox as a prior violent felony offender. In addition to the 45-year prison term, Cox will be subject to three years of post-release supervision.
According to evidence presented at trial, Cox sold cocaine and fentanyl to an undercover officer with the Suffolk County Police Department on four occasions between February 2 and February 20, 2023. Prosecutors said Cox was on parole at the time of the sales — a fact the district attorney's office placed at the centre of its argument for a long sentence.
On February 22, 2023, investigators executed a court-authorised search warrant at Cox's apartment. They recovered more than half an ounce of cocaine, a misdemeanour-level quantity of fentanyl and $9,247 in cash, prosecutors said. The seized cash included $730 that the undercover officer had used to buy drugs. Police also recovered packaging materials, medical gloves and a digital scale used in drug distribution, according to the prosecution account of the raid.
Cox was arrested during the search and has remained in custody since February 2023, prosecutors said — meaning he had already spent more than three and a half years behind bars while the case moved from arrest to trial and sentencing.
The conviction and a record stretching back to 2009
On September 24, 2026, a jury convicted Cox of six counts of third-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance and eight counts of third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, all class B felonies. He was also convicted of one misdemeanour count of seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and two misdemeanour counts of second-degree criminal possession of drug paraphernalia.
Prosecutors said Cox had accumulated a dozen criminal convictions dating back to 2009, including two violent felony convictions. His history, as set out by the district attorney's office, includes convictions for second-degree assault, attempted second-degree assault, aggravated harassment, driving while impaired and third-degree criminal possession of stolen property in 2018; resisting arrest in 2016 and 2012; seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance in 2014; and second-degree robbery, third-degree grand larceny and resisting arrest in 2009.
'New York State needs to stop the revolving door of recidivism and return to intensive monitoring of parolees to keep the public safe, particularly where those parolees are violent felony offenders like this defendant with a record going back 17 years,' District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney said.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorneys Robert Kerr and Lauren Golombek of the Suffolk County District Attorney's Narcotics Bureau, and the investigation was conducted by the Suffolk County Police Department's Narcotics Section. Cox was represented by attorney Christopher Gioe.
What happens next
Cox begins serving the 45-year term with three years of post-release supervision to follow, and the district attorney's office said he also has three pending criminal cases involving public lewdness charges. Those pending cases were listed by prosecutors at sentencing; no trial dates for them were given in the reports. For Suffolk County — the eastern Long Island county that includes Port Jefferson Station — the case closes a prosecution that began with four undercover buys in February 2023 and ended, more than three years later, with a sentence that will keep a repeat offender off the street for decades.