Six Indicted in Plot to Funnel Cocaine to State

A reputed kingpin in the global cocaine market and five cohorts in Colombia’s Medellin cartel were indicted Friday on charges that, confronted with police crackdowns in Southern California and Florida, they tried to set up a major distribution center in Denver to funnel cocaine to California and elsewhere.

Prosecutors said that Pablo Emilio Escobar-Gaviria, whom they describe as “one of the major cocaine traffickers in the world,” plotted to ship 800 kilos of cocaine--worth about $20.8 million--each week into the Denver area and reroute the drugs to California, Florida and throughout the Rocky Mountain area. Working on an informant’s tip after a trial shipment was made last month, federal agents said that they broke the operation before it could get off the ground.

Stepped-up Enforcement

“The drug cartel told our informants that increased federal law enforcement efforts in South Florida, South Texas and Southern California had made them seek new distribution centers in the U.S.,” said Michael J. Norton, U.S. attorney for Colorado. They also complained that their drug-running was stifled at home by stepped-up Colombian enforcement, Norton said.

A federal grand jury in Denver handed down the five-count indictment on drug conspiracy charges that carry maximum penalties of life imprisonment for each of the six defendants and fines of $4 million.

But Escobar--the principal target of the three-month investigation--and another defendant, Victor Cardona, remain at large. Escobar, 39, said to be worth more than $2 billion, is also a fugitive from a previous drug charge, a February drug count in Miami that also named Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega and sparked a still-unsettled diplomatic confrontation between the United States and the Panamanian leader.

Arrested at Motel

The other four reputed members of the Colombian drug cartel who were named in the indictment--Antonio Rafael Lubo-Arregoces, Hameth Antonio Meza-Gamarra, Jose Luis Juliao-Cuentas and Ramon Martinez--were all captured and jailed by federal agents May 25 after a meeting on the cocaine network in a Boulder, Colo., motel room and now face prosecution in Denver.

Prosecutors say that the Denver plot began April 20, when Juliao and another individual, not charged in the indictment but believed to be an informant in the cartel, met in Miami to discuss the opening of regular shipments of cocaine from Barranquilla, Colombia, into Denver.

Successful Trial Run

According to the indictment, one shipment was carried out successfully--a trial run of 335 kilos of cocaine that prosecutors said Meza and another man flew into Jefferson County Airport outside Denver in a private twin-engine plane on May 22.

Prosecutors charged that Escobar and his collaborators planned to repeat that operation each Saturday on a larger scale, flying 800 kilos of cocaine from an airstrip on the Peninsula de la Guajira, Colombia, to Jefferson airport.