More Than Ton of Hashish Seized; Six Men Arrested

More than a ton of Indian hashish smuggled from Bombay in a shipment of roofing nails was seized and six Southern California men were arrested in a joint operation by federal agents and Riverside County authorities, U.S. Customs officials said Thursday.

The 2,400-pound hashish shipment, estimated to be worth $10 million in street sales, is the largest ever seized in Southern California, according to Regional Commissioner Quintin L. Villanueva. It was found in commercial cargo that arrived aboard ship in Los Angeles July 23.

Customs inspectors used a special profile of “high-risk” factors to identify the cargo as a possible drug shipment, Villanueva said. While declining to be specific, he said it is based partially upon the track record of importers and intelligence about source countries.

“After several years of not seeing hashish on the street and trafficking around this part of the country, we’ve detected just recently increasing attempts to use commercial cargoes to conceal hashish shipments,” Villanueva said.

When inspectors examined the roofing nail shipment, they found that 40 of 319 cases consigned to a Lake Elsinore post office box contained two-pound bricks of hashish wrapped in plastic, Villanueva said. The Drug Enforcement Administration was called in.

Vince Frutado, acting special agent in charge of the Los Angeles DEA office, said agents kept the shipment under surveillance for four days, identified suspects and located the hashish in a trailer in what he called “the Riverside area.”

When the trailer was moved to a residence for breakdown of the hashish, DEA and Customs agents, joined by Riverside police and sheriff deputies, moved in and arrested the six suspects Wednesday.

The six were identified as Clyde Ronald Gates, 44, of Los Angeles; Arthur Garcia Cuesta, 41, South Laguna; Dennis Lipper, 44, and Jeff Rankin, 43, both of Lake Matthews, and Vance Link, 34, and Gene Heitland Fisher, 44, both of Riverside.

Besides being a record seizure in Southern California, Frutado said the hashish shipment is unusual in another way because smugglers usually try to bring the drug into the United States on the East Coast. However, he said, about 43,000 pounds of hashish and marijuana were also seized in the San Francisco area earlier this year.