$79 Million Worth of Cocaine Seized in Raid; Four Arrested

Drug investigators from the Los Angeles Police Department and federal Drug Enforcement Administration have seized 457 pounds of cocaine in Orange County and $526,500 in cash in downtown Los Angeles, it was announced Wednesday.

Agents seized the cash after arresting Julio Perez, 25, and Gloria Arias, 36, in Los Angeles on Tuesday. The arrests led to the issuance of search warrants for four Orange County locations, the investigators said.

The cache of cocaine, with an estimated street value of $79 million, was found during a search of a home on Delaware Street in Huntington Beach. Luz Mary Guzman, 26, was arrested at the house on suspicion of possession of cocaine.

The cocaine was discovered in a one-story, wood-frame house at the rear of the Huntington Beach address. The ramshackle house appeared to be unoccupied, although an expensive new automobile was parked in front. Observed through an open back window were three suitcases torn open on a bed, a television set and a few food items on a shelf.

Manuel Vasquez Garcia, 65, was arrested on drug charges at another search site on Canary Street in Costa Mesa.

The two residents of the front house at the Huntington Beach address identified their landlord as a man named Manuel Garcia and said he was the only person they had ever seen at the rear house.

Garcia had been doing repairs on the rear house last week when they last saw him there, according to resident Geoff Green, 21, a Newport Beach bartender.

Green said Garcia gave him a business card that identified him as an interpreter-investigator with offices in Santa Ana.

Mike Vreeland, 22, who also lives in the front residence and works at the same restaurant with Green, described Garcia as a “nice, friendly guy who always wore a baseball hat and who I called ‘Magnum,’ because he told us he was a private eye.”

Search warrants were also served at a house on Indiana Avenue in Buena Park and another home on Rancho Santiago in Orange. No arrests were made at those locations, according to DEA spokesman Dwight McKinney.

The investigation is continuing and further arrests are possible, said Lt. J. R. Schiller of the Police Department’s Narcotics Division.