San Diego

A two-month narcotics task force surveillance of a local drug smuggling ring ended when 600 pounds of cocaine with an estimated street value of $30 million was seized Monday from a home in San Diego, police said Tuesday.

Four houses were searched Monday after an agent from the San Diego County Integrated Narcotics Task Force, a group made up of city and county law enforcement agencies, received 10 kilograms of cocaine from a man he had been negotiating with since early December, said Lt. Patrick J. Kerins, of the task force.

The cocaine was found in a closet of a house in the 4700 block of 70th Street in East San Diego, Kerins said. Financial records relating to the sale of drugs were seized from houses in the 700 block of Camino de La Reina in Mission Valley, the 5900 block of Eldergardens Street in Del Cerro and the 7600 block of El Cajon Boulevard in La Mesa, he said.

Arrested in connection with the sale were Ralph Anda, 56, of San Diego, two alleged accomplices, Mario Rafael Ybarra-Flores, 45, of San Diego, and Antonio Cadena Cortez, 60, of Ensenada, Mexico, both of whom allegedly delivered the drugs to Anda, and Jose Antonio Villareal-Ulloa, 46, of Baja California, who was arrested at the 70th Street house.

The four men were arrested on suspicion of possession of a controlled substance for sale and conspiracy and booked into San Diego County Jail, Kerins said. Bail was set at $10 million each.

“This is the second-largest cocaine seizure by the narcotics task force,” said Kerins. The task force, which has made more than 10,000 arrests since its inception in 1973, seized 750 pounds of cocaine from a car after it crossed into San Diego from Mexico in December, 1989, he said.