4 in Cocaine Bust Plead Guilty on Eve of Trial : Drugs: Trial begins for the three remaining defendants arrested by Anaheim police. Seizure was second-largest in state.

Four of seven men charged in a December cocaine bust that was the second-largest ever in California pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges hours before their trial was to begin Tuesday.

The remaining three defendants--each charged with conspiracy to distribute and possession of nearly 5,000 pounds of cocaine--began their trial Tuesday afternoon before U.S. District Judge Mariana Pfalzer. The defendants are Hernan Aristizabal, 39, of Miami; Jose Faber Rodriguez-Zapata, 42, of Whittier, and Jose Bermudez Sosa, 42, of Prospect Park, N.J.

In opening statements, defense attorneys told the jury of eight women and four men that their clients were mere hired hands unaware of what was transpiring around them.

The four men who pleaded guilty--Ramon Quintana, 38, of Bergenfield, N.J.; Eduardo Alvarez, 31, of Chester, N.Y.; Guillermo Fernandez, 37, of Miami, and Jair DeJesus Mejia, 29, of Reseda--each face a sentence of 10 years to life in prison and fines of up to $4 million for their part in a plot to ship $30 million in cocaine to the East Coast in three tractor-trailer trucks. Sentencing is scheduled for August.

The men were arrested Dec. 16 in Baldwin Park, Hacienda Heights and Reseda by investigators from the Anaheim Police Department who were tipped off to the massive trafficking plot. It was not made clear at the time of the arrest how the crimes related to Anaheim or why investigators from there were involved, and two key investigators who testified Tuesday did not allude to how they obtained information about the shipping scheme.

The Anaheim investigators, along with federal agents, nabbed the suspects after they watched them transfer the shipments in cardboard U-Haul boxes from vans that delivered the cocaine from stash houses in Hacienda Heights, Northridge and Reseda to three tractor-trailer rigs parked outside a Howard Johnson motel in Baldwin Park, according to Tuesday’s testimony.

In his opening statement, Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael W. Fitzgerald painted a complex picture of the events that transpired from Dec. 11 to Dec. 16, when the arrests were made. The alleged traffickers, he said, engaged in a series of far-flung meetings in supermarket parking lots and the motel’s restaurant planning the scheme and keeping a sharp lookout for narcotics officers who were tailing them.

Fitzgerald charged that Aristizabal was behind the wheel of one of the cars used to transport the cocaine from stash houses to the tractor-trailers, while Sosa and Rodriguez-Zapata helped to load the drugs onto the rigs. He added that Sosa was present at the motel meeting.

But defense attorney Mike Brennan, representing Sosa, countered in his opening argument that Sosa was hired in Florida by Alvarez, who said that they were to travel to California to pick up a legitimate shipment. He did not deny that Sosa helped load the cartons onto the trucks, but claimed that Sosa had no knowledge of what was in the sealed U-Haul boxes.

“That was Mr. Sosa’s only physical contact with the cocaine,” Brennan said. “He was under the impression that this was a legitimate commercial load.”

Defense attorney Jay L. Lichtman, representing Aristizabal, also claimed that his client was unwittingly dragged into the crime. Aristizabal, he said, was visiting friends in California, including Jair Mejia, who Lichtman said asked Aristizabal to accompany him to the restaurant without telling him of the planned meeting.