205 Pounds of Cocaine and $1 Million in Cash Seized in County

The county’s regional narcotics task force seized more than $1 million in cash and 205 pounds of cocaine, with an estimated street value of $7.3 million, in separate raids in Fullerton and Huntington Beach, authorities announced Wednesday.

“This is enough coke to make a line of it for 970,000 people,” said Fullerton Police Chief Philip Goehring as he sat behind bundles of cocaine and cash displayed for a press conference at Fullerton City Hall.

Capt. Tim Simon, head of the Orange County Regional Narcotics Suppression Program, called Tuesday’s cache of drugs and cash “good size.”

Last month, the task force netted $5.2 million in cash after a six-month investigation, the largest money seizure in a California drug raid and the second-largest in the nation, behind a Miami case.

Just one person was arrested in Tuesday’s raids: Jaime Cuervo, 67, of Medellin, Colombia, on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance for sale.

He was at the scene when officers found the cocaine at a house in the 1500 block of Wavertree Lane in Fullerton. Police earlier searched the apartment where Cuervo reportedly lives in Buena Park--as well as two other apartments in Anaheim--without finding evidence of drugs. Cuervo was jailed in lieu of $1 million bail.

In a separate incident earlier Tuesday, officers questioned and released two Colombians after finding $1,005,000 in cash in the trunk and back seat of a 1986 Mercury that one of them was driving in Huntington Beach. Another $5,000 was found during a search of one of the Colombians’ homes in Huntington Beach.

The cash, on which police dogs sniffed cocaine residue, was confiscated and turned over to the Customs Service, which will later divide it among the police agencies who worked on the case.

“We are certain that these guys were laundering money or taking it out of the country,” said Simon of the task force. He added, however, that on the advice of prosecutors, the two were not arrested because of a lack of hard evidence.

Simon said task force members had been tailing the two Colombians, who were driving separate cars, for hours before deciding to stop and question them when they met in Huntington Beach.

He said the suspects were “countersurveillance driving”--doing such things as abruptly pulling off the freeway, or changing lanes--to ensure that they were not being followed as they made phone calls, met each other and stopped to pick up money.

“They had collected all this money, and were probably getting ready to send it back,” Simon said.

Goehring, one of 17 local and federal law enforcement representatives at the press conference, said it appeared that the seizures of the cash and cocaine were related, although that could not be immediately determined.

Harriett M. Wieder, chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, also read a letter from Gov. George Deukmejian at the press briefing that praised the task force for the seizure.

“The success of this locally led and funded program, which works closely with federal agencies, is testimony to the potential of a community’s determination to confront what seems like overwhelming odds and effectively attack the menace drugs pose in our society,” the governor’s letter said.