85 PERSONS CHARGED WITH DRUG DISTRIBUTION AND MONEY LAUNDERING

Feds roll up East County drug networks

By Greg Moran

The San Diego Union-Tribune
September 19, 2019

Federal authorities in San Diego said Thursday they had broken up a large network of drug dealers linked to the Sinaloa cartel that peddled methamphetamine, heroin and fentanyl from East County to points across the nation.

At a news conference at the local office of the Drug Enforcement Administration, officials said 85 people had been indicted for their roles in eight separate drug importation and distribution groups. On Thursday federal and local law enforcement fanned out and arrested 47 of the 85 defendants across southern California and reaching into Colorado and as far north as Alaska.

The raids and arrests capped a year-long investigation that started with busts of small-time, street-level drug dealers and grew into a sweeping probe that involved a 10-month federal wiretap, dozens of search warrants and undercover agents, said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Mazza.

In addition to the drug charges, the indictments include money laundering charges aimed at what was described as the tens of thousands of dollars in bulk cash that was collected after the sales. Agents with the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division traced the funds in their role as part of the large task force that investigated the drug organizations.

Mazza said the probe, dubbed “Operation Backpack,” was one of the most significant drug investigations in the San Diego area in recent years.

The eight indictments unsealed Thursday shed little light on the details of drug networks operations. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Sutton, the lead prosecutor on the case, said the drug gangs received smuggled narcotics from Mexico, then distributed them to suppliers in the state and across the country.

They were also responsible for shipping back the cash from the sales, most of it smuggled from the U.S. into Mexico in large bulk cash shipments, into the hands of Sinaloa-cartel-connected traffickers in Mexico.

Sutton said the indictments and arrests are “a critical strike against the Sinaloa cartel.”

During the course of the investigation agents seized 175 pounds of drugs, firearms and at least $50,000 in cash. The arrests on Thursday added another four pounds of methamphetamine and two guns to that total.

While the eight networks operated independently, Sutton said that they were also affiliated with each other in some ways, sharing suppliers and even some customers for the drugs, and working collaboratively in some aspects of their operations.

San Diego County has long been a shipment point for illegal drugs smuggled into the country from Mexico and Central and South America. DEA Agent Steven Woodland said at the news conference that a little more than a decade ago a pound of methamphetamine sold for about $17,000.

But since then the Sinaloa cartel, which by 2010 had wrested control of the lucrative Tijuana smuggling plaza after the demise of the Arellano-Félix drug trafficking organization, has flooded the market to the point where the same amount of the drug sells for about $1,200, Woodland said.

Most of the 47 people arrested Thursday are due to appear in federal court in downtown San Diego Friday afternoon.