Sylmar Drug Seizure Tied to El Paso, Juarez Ring : Cocaine: A federal investigator testifies that a defendant told of traffickers using legitimate-looking businesses and links to cartel.

A federal investigator testified Wednesday that a defendant in the record cocaine seizure in Sylmar said the operation was linked to a deep-rooted drug organization in the border cities of El Paso and Juarez with tentacles that included a corrupt American border guard.

The defendant described cocaine traffickers who utilized what appeared to be legitimate businesses in the El Paso area, such as an office with a secret drug stash area and a service station that harbored cocaine-carrying cars, Agent William L. Queen testified.

Queen, a criminal investigator for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said the defendant, Jose Ignacio Monroy, 37, told him that “he received his orders indirectly” from Colombia’s Medellin drug cartel while working for then-Juarez drug lord Rafael Munoz.

Munoz is jailed in Juarez. He is suspected of being a key middleman between the cartel and six suspects charged with participating in a massive drug-trafficking conspiracy in which tons of cocaine were shipped from El Paso to the Sylmar warehouse in the San Fernando Valley.

Approximately 21.4 tons of cocaine were seized at the warehouse Sept. 28 and 29 last year. Federal prosecutors told a jury in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. that much more was shipped there in big-rig trucks over a two-year period before the operation was shut down by federal and local law enforcement agents.

Monroy described his role as a runner who received $2,000 each time he picked up cocaine profits in shipping boxes in Los Angeles and returned the cash to the warehouse, according to testimony of a South Gate police narcotics officer, George Dominguez.

On trial along with Monroy are his father-in-law, Carlos Tapia-Ponce, 69, of Juarez; Tapia-Ponce’s son, Hector Tapia-Anchondo, 39; another Tapia-Ponce son-in-law, James Romero McTague, 42; Hugo Castillon-Alvarez, 33; and Miguel Chavez, 34.

In other testimony Wednesday, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent from Las Vegas, Alicia Brito, testified that the family’s patriarch, Tapia-Ponce, told her after he was arrested that he was a retired Mexican customs official who had only recently been trafficking in cocaine.

“He said he had only been in the narcotics business for seven months,” Brito said.

She also said that Tapia-Ponce told her “his family knew he trafficked in the cocaine business, but that they did not participate in it.”

Tapia-Ponce is the third defendant who told federal agents that they participated in the conspiracy, according to DEA and local law enforcement testimony in the 3-week-old trial.

Defendants’ lawyers said in brief opening statements that their clients had nothing to do with the Sylmar seizure. Court documents indicate they will argue that the defendants were coerced into making incriminating statements.

Tapia-Ponce and his son were arrested Sept. 29, 1989, by DEA agents at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. After being taken to DEA headquarters, Brito said he described receiving “50 to 100 kilograms” of cocaine in Los Angeles “two to three times a month.”

Brito said Tapia-Ponce told her that he knew a Juarez rancher who would contact him when a cocaine shipment was ready to be driven to Los Angeles. Tapia-Ponce would then give the rancher a beeper number so he could be contacted by the car driver.

Under questioning from Tapia-Ponce’s attorney, Joseph Abraham, Brito said Tapia-Ponce never mentioned the Sylmar operation or big-rig trucks that the prosecution contends hauled the cocaine to the warehouse.

According to agent Queen, Monroy said he was told that the brother of Mexican drug kingpin Rafael Munoz, Raul Munoz, had a U.S. Customs guard or immigration agent “on his payroll.” Queen said Monroy declared that drug traffickers would then be tipped on what line to get in at the El Paso border crossing so that they “would be waved through” by the unnamed border agent.