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Man messaged 'I got straight poison' before giving NYC college students fentanyl, feds say
By
Samantha Max
Published Oct 16, 2026 at 4:07 p.m. ET
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GHI/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
By
Samantha Max
Published Oct 16, 2026 at 4:07 p.m. ET
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Prosecutors say a man accused of poisoning two female college students with fentanyl and raping one of them in a Manhattan dorm room messaged a friend a week earlier that a sample of the drugs had made him sick and that he had “straight poison,” according to court records.
Federal prosecutors accused Moises Freire of giving two women a substance that he claimed was “pure cocaine” but was actually fentanyl, causing them both to lose consciousness. Freire then raped one of the women, according to the indictment. The U.S. attorney’s office said one woman survived, while the other died days later in a hospital. Prosecutors did not name either woman in charging papers.
A federal grand jury indicted Freire and Brian Peralta Cabrera on various drug-related charges Thursday. Prosecutors accused Peralta Cabrera of providing the drugs to Freire.
The charges come amid outcry over sexual violence on college campuses, after a former Cornell University student alleged in a bombshell lawsuit that she was gang raped at the Ivy League college in Upstate New York.
The indictment does not name the Manhattan university where the incident allegedly occurred, but Freire’s attorney said at a past court hearing that it happened at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Chelsea, which is part of the state university system.
A school spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Defense attorneys for Freire and Peralta Cabrera also did not immediately respond to questions.
Prosecutors initially charged Freire, Peralta Cabrera and another man with conspiring to distribute narcotics that resulted in death and serious bodily injury this past spring. They all pleaded not guilty at the time.
A transcript of a federal court hearing in April reveals new details about what prosecutors and defense attorneys say happened, based on messages and video footage.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Ariana Bloom told the judge that Freire tricked the two women into thinking the drugs were cocaine, telling lies that the substance was “pure” and purchased from a trusted source on a recent trip to Mexico.
She said that when Freire, who was 18 at the time, tested the drugs a week before, he messaged a friend that he felt lightheaded, was trembling and felt like he was going to vomit.
"I got straight poison,” Freire told his friend, according to the prosecutor.
His friend, whom the attorneys did not name, responded that he shouldn’t take the drugs himself and should give it to the “sluts,” Bloom said at the hearing. “Disturbingly, the defendant did exactly that,” she told U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein.
On March 18, she said, Freire pressured the women to use the drugs and didn’t take them himself. Freire admitted in a statement to campus security that he had been having sex with one of the women and realized she was unconscious when he opened his eyes afterward, according to Bloom.
He then looked to his left and saw the other woman on the floor with her eyes rolled back in her head, the prosecutor said he told campus police.
Bloom said Freire texted his friends that the women were unconscious and sent multiple photos of them while they were passed out. She said Freire waited at least 40 minutes to get help, and that the drugs had disappeared by the time law enforcement searched the room.
“So it's unclear what the defendant was doing in those 40 minutes other than sending text messages to his friends and not calling for help,” the prosecutor said. “So all of that suggests that the defendant not only knowingly brought a dangerous substance to a college dorm and pressured two college girls to use it, but then once things started going south, instead of calling 9-1-1 or alerting someone or prioritizing their lives, he took time to take pictures of them and to protect himself.”
Freire’s attorney, federal defender Mitchell Schwartz, said at the April court hearing that his client was not a student at FIT but had been accepted to John Jay College of Criminal Justice and needed to complete an internship before he started classes.
He said Freire and the woman who died had known each other for about a year and had been in some sort of relationship, starting when he was in high school and she was in college.
Schwartz said his client is not a drug dealer and that the women were the ones who invited him over and asked him to bring cocaine. He called what happened “a tragedy” but denied that his client is “some evil kid.”
After reading and listening to messages between Freire and the woman in the lead-up to her death, he said it was “like I would say reading a story of teenagers doing what I would call dumb teenager things.”
“It’s not dumb teenager things to give somebody fentanyl, sir,” the judge responded.
In April, Stein ordered that Freire be held in jail without bail until his trial.
“The proof in court, the proof is extremely strong,” the judge said.
A court date has not yet been set for Freire and Peralta Cabrera to be arraigned on the new charges.
Tagged
education
fashion institute of technology
manhattan
public safety
Samantha Max
Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal: samanthamaxwnyc.93.
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