Police Say Cuban Coke Ring Broken

California law enforcement officials said Tuesday they had broken up a cross-country drug distribution ring run by a Cuban organization and confiscated approximately 1,400 pounds of cocaine valued at $22 million on the street.

The Colombian-produced cocaine was found in two big-rig trucks--one stopped in Burbank where the drug was discovered in a secret compartment, the other seized in Blythe in Riverside County, authorities said. Seven Cuban nationals were arrested locally and in New Jersey.

The cocaine was displayed at a news conference held at Parker Center by officials from three law enforcement agencies that worked on the case, the Drug Enforcement Administration, California Highway Patrol and Los Angeles Police Department.

Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, CHP Commissioner Maury Hannigan and Mike Holm, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA’s Los Angeles office, said the cocaine entered the United States from Mexico. They declined to say where it had crossed the border.

The trucking firm, which called itself Moonlighting Trucking Co. of Alma, Ark., was “a sham” designed to haul cocaine coast to coast, Gates said.

The seizures did not represent anything near the multi-ton quantities of cocaine that have been confiscated in the past year in the Los Angeles area, which narcotics officials say is the nation’s top cocaine distribution center. Earlier this month, more than 7,700 pounds of cocaine were seized in a propane tanker at a customs checkpoint near San Diego. A record 21 tons were seized last year in a Sylmar warehouse.

“There is still a tremendous problem of cocaine coming into the U.S.,” Holm said.

In past years, Cuban drug dealers would smuggle narcotics through Florida. However, as a result of a law enforcement crackdown in Florida, a significant shift occurred a few years ago in trafficking patterns, officials said.