Bay Area Sting Nets a Ton of Cocaine

Federal agents have seized more than a ton of cocaine worth an estimated $100 million in what authorities described Friday as the largest cocaine seizure from a drug ring based in Northern California.

Authorities said the seizure stemmed from a sting operation based in San Francisco that involved police in five other nations over a six-month period and led to nine arrests on Friday.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local police arrested two pilots and a third man when a plane carrying 550 kilograms of the drug landed at a clandestine airstrip in an undisclosed Central American country Friday, Robert E. Bender, head of the DEA office in San Francisco, said.

Bender said at a news conference that undercover agents first met members of the Medellin Cartel in an undisclosed Central American country on March 3 and arranged for the shipment of 450 kilograms to the Bay Area. The initial shipment helped authorities arrange a second shipment delivered Friday.

“We had to convince the traffickers we had the means to bring the cocaine to the United States,” Bender said, explaining the initial shipment. “They wanted to expand their distribution and we had to show them we were serious.”

“Once they knew we could get their product to the United States they agreed to go forward.”

Bender said the previous record cocaine seizure by Northern California authorities was 125 pounds nearly two years ago.

On Friday, DEA agents arrested Juan Noriega, a “controller” for the cartel in the United States who oversaw distributors who brought cocaine into the country and then supplied local dealers, Bender said.

Also arrested at a hotel near San Francisco International Airport were four other men--American David Edward Villegas, Colombians Carlos Guerriero and Jaime Uribe and Frank Emilio Delacampa of Cuba.

Rosanna Patricia Tagler, a Peruvian citizen who allegedly helped coordinate the deal, was arrested in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Bender said. Authorities did not provide the names of three Colombians arrested in Central America.

The first shipment was flown from the airstrip in Central America to Howard Air Force Base in Panama and then in Air Force planes to Moffett Field near San Jose, where it was turned over to DEA agents, Bender said. The agents then allowed Noriega to inspect the cocaine in the back of a truck parked in San Francisco’s Marina District, Bender said.

Once Noriega saw the undercover agents could transport the cocaine into the United States, he told his superiors in Colombia to approve the second half of the shipment that was delivered on Friday, Bender said.

Bender cautioned that Friday’s bust had not made a dent in the overall cocaine trade.

“It’s a drop in the bucket,” he said. “There’s a lot more (cocaine) out there.”