Drug Suspects Were Paid $81 Million in 4 Months, Official Says : Cocaine: Trial defendants hauled the narcotics from Texas to L.A., jurors are told.

Members of a Mexican family on trial in connection with the record cocaine seizure last year in a Sylmar warehouse were paid by Colombian drug kingpins more than $81 million in a four-month period to haul cocaine from El Paso to Los Angeles aboard big-rig trucks, a top federal drug investigator testified Wednesday.

“This was the transportation segment of a major (narcotics) organization,” said Larry Lyons, who coordinates worldwide cocaine investigations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington.

Lyons told a federal court jury in Los Angeles that the Colombian drug cartel used the defendants to transport its illegal narcotics to the United States “much like you would use UPS or Federal Express.”

Lyons was the final prosecution witness in the trial of six men who were arrested last year after the seizure of 21.4 tons of cocaine at a warehouse in the San Fernando Valley community of Sylmar.

Aside from the enormous quantity of cocaine that was seized, the government views the Sylmar case as an unprecedented opportunity to explore the key transportation operations of the Colombian drug cartels.

During Lyons’ testimony, jurors were shown projections on a movie screen of ledgers which, Lyons testified, detailed how the defendants utilized their enormous profits.

While the ledgers do not show how the $81 million was ultimately distributed, they indicate, for example, that the drug ring spent $167,000 on a house, $4,500 on a tractor and $4,800 to buy whiskey, and that large cash payments were made to several individuals.

Prosecutors believe that much of the cash was invested in real estate on both sides of the border. Some of the property has since been confiscated by U.S. and Mexican authorities.

DEA investigators have said that the Sylmar cocaine operation was largely orchestrated by the Medellin cartel in Colombia, which shipped the drugs into Mexico by plane.

Once there, DEA analysts believe, a Mexican drug kingpin, Rafael Munoz Talavera, took over the overland transporting of the cocaine into the United States. Munoz is in a Juarez jail and has been charged by Mexican authorities with cocaine trafficking, conspiracy and firearms violations.

Court documents indicate that the defendants worked under Munoz, hiding their contraband cargo inside big-rig trucks and driving across the border into El Paso and then along the interstate highway system to Los Angeles. Lyons did not address how Munoz’s organization parceled out its profits.

The defendants, who include a father and son, are charged with conspiracy to possess narcotics with intent to distribute and distribution of narcotics. They are Carlos Tapia Ponce, 69, of Chihuahua, Mexico, a retired Mexican customs official; his son, Hector, 39; two of Tapia’s sons-in-law, James Romero McTague, 42, and Jose Ignacio Monroy, 37; Hugo Fernando Castillon Alvarez, 32; and Miguel Chavez, 34. All but McTague are from Mexico.

The defendants have maintained their innocence

Lyons said that it was “absolutely common” to find “close family members” involved in a cocaine operation. “It goes to the need for security,” he said.

Defense attorneys expressed outrage at Lyons’ testimony, declaring that the veteran DEA investigator had no firsthand knowledge of how the defendants made a living nor could he positively identify the defendants’ names on the seized documents.

“What we have here is a real sad day in American jurisprudence,” attorney David Z. Chesnoff complained to U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. after the jury had left the courtroom. “Let (Lyons) pronounce everyone guilty and we could save four weeks (of trial).”

Hatter dismissed several requests for a mistrial after Lyons’ testimony.

Under questioning from Special Assistant U.S. Atty. Susan Bryant-Deason, Lyons said it was not surprising that house payments and other daily expenses should be recorded on a narcotics organization’s spreadsheet.

“They live off of that (the profits),” he said. “That’s their livelihood.”

Over two days of testimony, Lyons underscored that there were common denominators in entries on ledgers confiscated from the Sylmar warehouse, from McTague’s briefcase and from Hector Tapia’s one-story home in El Paso.

For the most part, he said, ledger figures recording cocaine transported to Los Angeles were identical with the figures found in the briefcase and in the El Paso home. He also said the same code names of major Colombian drug distributors were also found.

After his arrest by DEA agents on Sept. 29, 1989, in Las Vegas, Nev., Hector Tapia told a DEA agent “that his income is derived from a family cattle ranch” in Mexico, according to a DEA report in court files.

Investigators have documented that cocaine was being run through the Sylmar warehouse for at least two years. In the final months before the historic cocaine seizure, the Colombians accelerated the shipments, investigators said.

Focusing on this period, Lyons said that for an 89-day period beginning on June 26, 1989, 70,242 kilograms--154,532 pounds--of cocaine moved through the warehouse, according to seized documents.

For their efforts in driving the big-rig trucks that brought the cocaine to Los Angeles, the defendants were paid $81,601,000 between May 31 and Sept. 26, 1989, Lyons said, again basing his data on the seized documents.

But the seized documents also indicated that some of the cash--it is not known precisely how much--was funneled into at least two bank safe deposit boxes, Lyons said. The boxes were never located.

The trial is expected to go to the jury next week.