A New London woman who took over her boyfriend’s drug-dealing business and used her Twitter account to advertise heroin, was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court to 46 months in prison.

Heather Ranghelli, a striking 24-year-old blond known as “Barbie,” bragged on her Twitter account that she likes “flipping grams” and posted pictures of heroin bags with the hashtag, #marketing, according to a sentencing memorandum written by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah P. Karwan.

Ranghelli took over her boyfriend, Cruz “Jay” Bonilla’s heroin distribution business after he was incarcerated for a parole violation in 2012, according to the government.

“Rather than see his incarceration as a wake-up call of the direction in which she was headed, Ms. Ranghelli proceed full steam ahead, seeking out Enrique Luciano and Luis ‘Ariel’ Capellan Maldonado for thousands of dollars of heroin,” according to the sentencing memorandum. Luciano and Capellan Maldonado were high-level heroin distributors and are currently incarcerated.

In phone calls from prison, Bonilla and Ranghelli discussed her customers, how much money she was making and which competitors were giving her problems on the streets, according to the government.

Using Bonilla’s “work phone,” Ranghelli would sell Bonilla’s customers heroin that she bought from in quantities of 10 to 30 grams.

She was among the 100 people arrested in April 2013 in a joint law enforcement effort involving federal, local and state authorities to dismantle overlapping conspiracies that supplied the region with heroin from the Dominican Republic and cocaine from Puerto Rico. Cruz was also charged and is serving a 68-month federal prison sentence for distribution of heroin.

Released to a rehabilitation program, Ranghelli left the program early and continued to sell heroin, according to the government. New London Police also arrested her in June 2014 for possession of narcotics and sale of heroin after a informant told them he had purchased the drug from “Barbie.”

Her attorney, Jonathan J. Einhorn, said Ranghelli is a heroin addict who was manipulated by her boyfriend.

“While speaking to her from jail, and directing her to service his drug customers, he talked of marriage and having a baby with her,” Einhorn wrote.

Ranghelli, awaiting acceptance into the federal Court Support program, which may have provided an opportunity to serve less prison time, mocked the program on social media and violated the conditions of her release by traveling out of state, according to the government.

Ranghelli has previous convictions in state court for sixth-degree larceny, reckless driving and failure to appear in court.

With family and friends filling three rows of a New Haven courtroom at Monday's sentencing, Ranghelli, dressed in blue prison scrubs, told Judge Janet Bond Arterton that her father had died of a heroin overdose when she was 8 years old and that she never thought she would be weak enough to use the same drug. She apologized to the harm she had done to the community and spoke of  better times of her life, such as when she and her twin sister were cheerleaders and when she worked as a model. She said she had reached "rock bottom" because of drugs.

The judge, noting that Ranghelli's conduct while on pretrial release was "flagrantly disrespectful" and that she had flaunted the system on social media, agreed to take into account Ranghelli's drug addiction and her admission of responsibility when meting out the sentence.

Arterton said the heroin conspiracy had "afflicted the New London community in a way never seen before." She said Ranghelli was responsible for "shoveling out into the New London community a very large quantity of heroin."

The judge said the information she had before hearing Ranghelli speak showed that Ranghelli had "bought into the world of the hashtag, which will get you nowhere."

The judge recommended Ranghelli be placed in a prison with an intensive drug program and told her, "Put behind the people who pull you down."

Ranghelli insisted that most of her Tweets were references to Hollywood celebrities and lyrics of rap songs.

k.florin@theday.com

Twitter: @KFLORIN