The L. A. Connection : Working 20 Months Under Cover, LAPD Detective ‘Bumpy’ Marco Helped Destroy Big Drug Network

Jose Garcia was a known, trusted, highly successful launderer of very dirty money.

Colombia’s narcotraficantes telephoned his Los Angeles beeper daily. They were dealing cocaine to California by the ton. Garcia called back from a cellular phone in his Mercedes--with the dates and amounts of laundered proceeds he was cabling to Panama and Bogota by the millions.

Garcia’s percentage was 5 cents on the laundered dollar and that earned him $1.5 million a year. He survived unquestioned within an underworld where even the loyal live only one misunderstanding, one trigger pull from execution.

Now the other side knows better.

No More Dom Perignon

Jose Garcia has returned his Mercedes and given up Dom Perignon with $400 dinners. He has resurfaced, without any great fanfare, as Horacio (Bumpy) Marco, a veteran Los Angeles cop.

For 20 months, Marco--19 years with Los Angeles Police Department, 12 years an undercover narcotics detective--was a major player in Operation Pisces, a multiagency drug investigation.

The result, say those now prosecuting Marco’s arrests, was the heaviest damage to drug trafficking in U.S. history.

By comparison, New York’s infamous French Connection case of 1962 saw the capture of 112 pounds of heroin worth $5 million and the conviction of six people.

Operation Pisces, when Marco and his partners were done fishing, had captured 9,700 pounds of cocaine--more than four tons worth $1.6 billion.

Cash confiscations from Los Angeles runners and dealers totaled $23 million.

More than 240 drug dealers were taken into custody nationwide, including an 18-man ring headed by William Londono, a Colombian national considered one of the most notorious cocaine traffickers in Southern California.

Last month, Londono, 23, escaped from Los Angeles County Jail in a break Sheriff Sherman Block acknowledged may have involved bribes to jail personnel.

Marco, in an interview with The Times, his first since the undercover operation was dismantled, said the escape “hurts.”

“In Mexico it happens, in Colombia it happens,” he said. “But not here in Los Angeles, Calif.”

He called the escape classic proof of the relentless, frustrating, near-invincible power of today’s drug lords. No bribe, no contract killing, no illegal talent nor legal aid is beyond their billions.

Blunting that power has been a passion with Marco, 41, an Air Force veteran of the Vietnam War, since he was graduated from the police academy in 1968.

He was motivated by the past: “I went to high school in East L.A. . . . I saw kids dropping out, being busted for dope and one who got killed behind a drug deal.”

He also happened to be very good at the hunt: “Some guys (officers) can pick out a stolen car three miles away on a crowded freeway. I’m good at spotting drugs and people with dope. It’s an instinct, a sixth sense. What makes it click? I don’t know.”

Twelve years ago, Marco was accepted for undercover work with the elite Major Violators Unit of Los Angeles Police Department’s Narcotics Division.

He busted a Redlands attorney for dealing heroin and a Los Angeles police officer transporting cocaine in a limousine he operated off duty. At a celebration following one arrest, the squad partied hard and Marco danced the bump into the wee hours. They called him Bumpy. He was accepted.

On the street, in the Beverly Hills hotels and Anaheim apartments, Marco’s cover was almost perfect. He simply told the truth.

That he was born in Buenos Aires, an architect’s son unable to follow his dream of playing professional soccer. That he had come to the United States as a teen-ager. That his second wife is named Blanca and there are four children at home.

‘I Don’t Pretend . . . ‘

“You’re (perceived as) a narc if you don’t quite fit the group you’re infiltrating,” he said. “So when I’m working undercover, I’m from Argentina and I have a wife and four kids. I don’t pretend to be single. I tell them about my kids, about when they get sick and their problems at school.

“If I were not a cop, if I were a schoolteacher, I’d dress the way I do now. I just don’t pretend to be anyone else . . . except to pretend that I’m not a cop.”

It helps that he’s slight, polite and looks more soccer player than police officer.

In 1985, Operation Pisces gave Marco’s cover its toughest, longest, most dangerous test.

(Some names in the following account have been changed or omitted to protect pending court cases and the identity of undercover operatives.)

It all began with a routine sighting.

At LAX, federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent Ken Warren and L.A. police narcotics officer Michael McGaff found themselves watching a Colombian national who was bringing 200 to 300 kilograms of cocaine into the United States every six months.

“They start watching this guy,” explained Marco. “They don’t know how the cocaine is coming in. But he gets here, the dope appears and the sales go down and then he leaves.

“At the same time, they (DEA) are running Operation Pisces in Miami . . . a way to get (to identify) dope peddlers by laundering their money.”

Legitimate Transactions

In legitimate international business transactions, monies are deposited in banks, changed into the currency of the seller and then cabled overseas or even hand-carried out of the country. Federal regulations require U.S. banks to report all deposits in excess of $10,000. And if more than $10,000 in American currency is taken out of the country, it must be declared to U.S. Customs.

Drug dealers prefer to avoid such scrutiny.

“So you (the drug dealer) are looking for the safest way to get the fruits of your effort back to Colombia,” said Marco. “Big money is bulky and difficult to smuggle. You have to find someone with an operation to launder the money and get it out of the country for you.”

The Colombian making periodic visits to Los Angeles apparently was in search of such an operation. He made contact with the federal laundering organization in Miami. A computer search was made by the undercover agent there, who turned up the fact that the same dealer had been the subject of surveillance in Los Angeles.

Marriage Proposal

“And then there’s a marriage,” said Marco. “DEA in Miami makes the decision that they needed someone in Los Angeles to work the Colombian and form an undercover laundering operation here.”

Marco was chosen. He became Jose Garcia.

The potential of the investigation excited him. “I’d never heard of anyone bringing in hundreds of kilos (of cocaine) on a regular basis,” he said. “I figured it would be the end of the rainbow if we ever made these guys.”

The dangers were accepted. They were, he said, the standard payment of this “high-stakes chess. Once in a while you take your lumps. But most of the time we’ll win because greed gets them.”

In October, 1985, cover stories and the new satellite laundering operation were brought together.

Marco would represent the Los Angeles Police Department. A DEA agent was given the name of Juan Rodriguez.

West Coast Branch

Their company would be called Euromex Investments, the West Coast branch of the Miami front, ostensibly a financial consulting firm specializing in overseas financing. Business cards were printed. A Burbank apartment was rented for the exchange and counting of currency.

A Los Angeles bank agreed to accept the drug money and make the transfers into pesos with Colombian banks.

“Rodriguez and the agent in Miami, a New York Puerto Rican, would be first cousins,” said Marco. “I became Rodriguez’s brother-in-law so we could tell everyone there was security in dealing with a family operation.

“I would still be from Argentina, but here illegally. I was here to make money and go back to Argentina. I hated the United States. I hated Americans and I was building a hotel in Argentina and buying a condominium for my parents.

“Of course, I still had a wife and four kids.”

It was Marco’s decision to carry a gun, a snub-nosed .38. Because drug dealers carry guns. He would leave his badge at home. “If they suspect something and don’t find a badge, the game is still good,” he said.

Driving in Style

Cars were leased and, over time, Marco would drive a Mercedes, a Jaguar and a Corvette. Nobody drove a Ferrari Testarossa or wore gold Rolex watches and designer clothes. That’s “Miami Vice,” said Marco, not L.A. Narcotics.

It was decided that they would entertain at expensive restaurants but not exclusive restaurants. Colombian drug dealers might stand out at the Bistro. Similarly, drug contacts would be taken to the fights, not the ballet.

Security was tight. None of the team would speak English. Marco was even barred from visiting L.A. police facilities in case he was ever tailed. His reports would be written from a rented office over a grocery store on the fringe of Chinatown.

“We told our landlord that we were police officers but figured we could trust him,” said Marco. “He’s the honorary mayor of Lincoln Heights.”

From the first day of business, Euromex was a thundering success. The original Colombian led to his partner who led to a third Colombian and, eventually, the biggest dealer in Colombia.

‘Selling Our Service’

“Not only is (First Colombian) a dope dealer, he now has a money laundering service in Los Angeles,” said Marco. “So he goes back to Colombia and starts selling the cocaine kings our service. We’re charging him a fee and he’s charging the cocaine kings another 1% or 2% on top of that.”

Marco laundered loads delivered in boxes that once held vacuum cleaners and microwave ovens. A $500,000 delivery was routine. One counted out to $1.5 million.

“It takes three hours to count out $1.5 million, and it was in $20 bills,” he said. “We had this joke that all the 100s had been shipped to Colombia and now we were working on the 20s.”

From the taxpayers’ point of view, the operation was self-supporting. Marco and Rodriguez, who collected $2.5 million in 20 months just from their 5% service charge, had no cash-flow problems. Quite the contrary. “We had more money than we knew what to do with,” Marco said.

Yet not enough that the federal government couldn’t find a use for it. It was collected by accountants and returned to finance further phases of Operation Pisces.

Laundering $48 Million

During its operation, Euromex was responsible for laundering $48 million in cocaine revenues. That means drug money that was not confiscated, but rather was dutifully deposited in drug dealers’ accounts in Colombia and Panama.

Were the 240 final arrests worth the illegal transfer of $48 million?

“I know there is an epidemic (of drugs) in this country,” Marco said. “I have growing children and I’m scared to death. Sure, I was laundering their money, but we also were busting people right along. . . . We were dealing with the top individuals in this business in the United States.”

Marco also feels that the team’s confiscation of $23 million in cash further mitigates the laundering of $48 million.

“We wanted to maintain a ratio favorable to us,” he said. “We didn’t want to do more for them than we would get out of it. So if we had a guy coming in and we knew everything about him, we’d set up the (money delivery) appointment and then send a black-and-white (patrol car) to stop him and take the money away.

“And they’d call and say: ‘Hey, man, somebody took our money.’ And we’d say: ‘Hey, man, what can we do about it?’ ”

There were lighter moments.

Overzealous Assistance

Such as the freeway surveillance of one suspect by Marco, his partner, unmarked police cars and an Police Department helicopter. An overzealous California Highway Patrol officer who happened to be monitoring their radio frequency decided to assist in what he presumed was a police chase, and promptly pulled the man over to hold him at gunpoint.

“We were able to get a radio message to him,” said Marco. “We had him turn the guy loose with a speeding ticket. But we lost that one. The guy went back to Colombia the next day.”

To keep up the front, Marco maintained friendships with Euromex’s biggest customers. He was in their confidence to the point where one set up drug deals in his presence.

“He’d get phone calls and arrange for deals, pickups and distribution, with a portable phone hooked over his shoulder,” said Marco. “While we were shopping at the Glendale Galleria.”

On a visit to Florida, the Los Angeles launderers were feted by their opposite numbers in Miami. They visited (with Johnny Walker Black and Absolut vodka ordered by the bottle) a Colombian nightclub, a known hangout for drug dealers in the city.

There was a metal detector at the doorway to locate concealed weapons. Marco and his party were among dozens who saw the detector, looked suitably nervous, and returned to their cars to remove their guns before re-entering the restaurant.

Incessant Tension

There also were darker moments to Operation Pisces, and an incessant tension that demanded that no deal, no delivery, no bust would be made without the full and close backup of four or five Narcotics Division officers.

“We were constantly changing (pickup point) apartments to make it look good every time somebody got busted as a result of our work,” said Marco. “Every time one of those guys got busted, we didn’t know if we were still cool.

“So the first one (money delivery) after the big bust, we didn’t know if they knew who we were and would they be coming through that door to do us.”

In the end, it was decided that the odds had degenerated into the danger zone. The L.A. operation was dismantled, the victim, in a sense, of its own success.

“We’d got to the point where too many people knew about it,” said Marco. “We’d convicted people and they were doing time. We’d given in camera evidence, but attorneys knew about it, court clerks knew about it, and we were afraid that the repetition would get us.

“Then two (deputy) district attorneys (Curtis Hazell and Charles Horan) said: ‘How long can we keep doing this? Maybe, somewhere, there’s a dealer with a big board who is putting it all together and searching for a common denominator.’ ”

Burnout Factor

Finally, there was the burnout factor. “We could not keep up the pace, going 12 hours a day, seven days a week. So we took the operation down. But we took it down by our own choice--not because the crooks made us. We were never burned. We didn’t lose the operation. And that’s satisfying.”

The airport watch continues. Marco’s federal partner has been given a fresh alias and a new undercover assignment. All principals are awaiting trial or have been indicted and are fugitives.

And in a public ceremony at the Biltmore Hotel on Sept. 2, Detective Horacio (Bumpy) Marco was awarded the Medal of Valor, the Police Department’s highest decoration.

Marco can relax a little. Blanca and the children are out from beneath the strain and can speak of their pride in their husband and father. Neighbors need no longer worry about the integrity of a policeman who drove home in a Jaguar XJ6 and a 1987 Corvette and a Mercedes 300.

Marco can be interviewed and talk freely of the past because he is taking up new duties with reduced emphasis on deep undercover work.

Yet it is not completely finished.

There remains the possibility of revenge.

24-Hour Protection

For three months after Pisces was dismantled, Marco and his family were given 24-hour police protection. It was resumed when Londono escaped. Marco’s address, even the area where he lives, is highly classified.

“They probably don’t like me very much,” he said of the drug barons. “So you do take precautions, but you can’t let the precautions rule your life.

“I always make sure I’m not being followed. I always have my gun with me . . . and the house is wired for everything and anything.”

If there is any doubt of the dangers of his work, Marco always has the reminder of his radio call sign.

It is 9 Yankee 73. Nine Yankee identifies the division’s Major Violators Unit. Numbers in the 70s identify Marco’s squad, commanded by Detective Supervisor Brian Murphy.

“He’s 9 Yankee 70. I’m 9 Yankee 73. There is no 9 Yankee 72. It belonged to (narcotics Detective Gerald) Blackie Sawyer.

“We retired the call sign when Sawyer was shot and killed in 1973 during a drug bust.”