Drug-Cash Laundering Trial to Start Today : Court: Investigators say Otoniel Urrego directed an operation that shipped $25 million in cocaine profits from a Simi Valley office every two months.

More than three years after Simi Valley police seized nearly $2.5 million in alleged drug profits, a Colombian linked to an international cocaine cartel is scheduled to go on trial today in the biggest drug-money laundering case in Ventura County history.

Otoniel Urrego, 68, is accused of conspiracy to import cocaine and possession of more than $100,000 in drug money.

In court papers, investigators describe Urrego as a lieutenant in the Colombian cartel. From his home in Hialeah, Fla., investigators say, Urrego directed an operation that shipped $25 million in cocaine profits from a Simi Valley office every two months.

“He was obviously the head man” of the Simi Valley operation, Deputy Dist. Atty. James Grunert told the Ventura County grand jury, which indicted Urrego in June, 1991.

But Urrego’s attorney, Terrence A. Roden of Los Angeles, said his client “had nothing to do with this.” He said prosecutors are trying to “damn him by inference” because Urrego is from Colombia and because his brother may have been involved in questionable activities.

“They can’t even place my client in Ventura County during the events that happened,” Roden said.

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The subject of the controversy is a 5-foot-6, gray-haired man who needs an interpreter to translate court proceedings into Spanish. Paralyzed below the waist since age 13, Urrego uses a wheelchair and has complained to jail officials of numbness in his hands caused by carpal tunnel syndrome.

According to court papers, the case began in May, 1989, when an informant called Simi Valley police and said some people named Urrego were involved in cocaine trafficking and money laundering.

For about two weeks, police watched the home of Floriberto and Marta Urrego in Chatsworth and that of Luz Urrego in Simi Valley. Floriberto, 51, is Otoniel Urrego’s brother; Marta, 39, is Floriberto’s wife; and Luz, 39, is Otoniel’s sister-in-law, according to court papers.

In testimony before the grand jury, Simi Valley police detectives said that, on May 27, 1989, Floriberto Urrego left Luz Urrego’s residence on Sweetwood Street carrying three suitcases, which he loaded onto a pickup truck and drove to his home on Poema Place in Chatsworth.

After transferring the bags to the trunk of a red Oldsmobile, Floriberto and Marta Urrego drove in two cars to the intersection of Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Nordhoff Street in Chatsworth and waited for more than two hours, investigators said.

A woman identified as Melba Sanchez walked up, and Floriberto Urrego handed her the keys to the Oldsmobile, which she entered and drove off, Simi Valley investigators said. The Urregos returned home in the second car. Police stopped the Olds, opened the suitcases, and found bundles of cellophane-wrapped cash amounting to $1.5 million, investigators said. The cash was in bills ranging from $5 to $100.

After obtaining search warrants, they searched the homes in Chatsworth and Simi Valley. At Luz Urrego’s home on Sweetwood, investigators said they found an additional $990,000 in a bedroom closet. In addition, investigators found a journal that they said recorded, in code, cash collections from four cocaine distributors amounting to $25 million in the preceding two months.

Records at the Sweetwood home led investigators to search the offices of Pacific-American Export Co., which occupied space that Floriberto Urrego had leased in an industrial park on Angus Avenue in Simi Valley, according to a summary of the case filed by prosecutors.

There, investigators found a heat-seal plastic-wrapping machine, a paper shredder, a fax machine and a dozen 30-gallon drums of dry paint pigment marked with labels addressed to a Dallas company, according to the case summary.

But the sparsely furnished office had no files, no business records and no means of producing or using the pigment. Workers at neighboring offices said they had seen the Urregos come and go but observed no customers or employees at Pacific-American Export, according to the case summary.

“Detectives concluded that the money was being sent from Simi Valley to Dallas in drums along with the paint pigment,” the case summary said, adding that commercial trucking companies were used to make the shipments.

Within days of the seizure, district attorney’s investigator Mark Coronado went to the Dallas address and found an office that had been recently vacated, its furniture and other equipment abandoned.

Floriberto, Marta and Luz Urrego were arrested but were released a few days later. Sanchez was also detained briefly. Prosecutors said they lacked sufficient evidence to convict them of a crime. Floriberto and Marta returned to Colombia, and from there they tried to contest an effort by police and prosecutors to keep the nearly $2.5 million cash that had been seized.

But a Ventura County Superior Court judge ruled that, if they wanted to fight the seizure, they would have to return to Ventura County--a trip that the couple apparently were unwilling to make. In June, 1991, the court ruled that they had forfeited the money--which had grown to $2.9 million with interest--and it was divided among the Simi Valley Police Department and other law enforcement agencies.

That same month, the grand jury indicted Otoniel and Luz Urrego on drug conspiracy and money-laundering charges, although the indictments were kept secret for nine months because of other related investigations.

Until his arrest in March, Otoniel Urrego’s name had never been publicly mentioned in connection with the case. And according to court papers, the evidence linking him to it consists mainly of telephone calls from the Simi Valley office to a number listed in Otoniel Urrego’s name in Hialeah, a Miami suburb. Records also allegedly show a number of calls from the Hialeah number to Bogota, Colombia.

In their case summary, prosecutors cite other links between Floriberto and Otoniel Urrego. Prosecutors say the brothers maintained a joint account at a Miami bank, and Otoniel lived at the Chatsworth residence before Floriberto and Marta Urrego moved in.

In court filings, investigators said the Colombian cartel’s operations in the United States consist of two distinct networks: one to import and distribute the cocaine, the other to collect and ship money back to Colombia. The Simi Valley operation apparently was a “cell” in the latter network, investigators said.

“Cells typically fax information to the next highest level,” said one investigator in an affidavit. Investigators believe that the calls were facsimile transmissions of records and expense receipts connected with the Simi Valley operation, according to the case summary.

Roden, Otoniel Urrego’s attorney, said the phone calls prove nothing. He said several people were living at the Hialeah house, and there is no evidence that Otoniel Urrego received the calls or fax messages.

He also dismissed other evidence that prosecutors say will establish that Otoniel Urrego has been involved in money laundering. For example, the court file mentions an incident in which Otoniel Urrego dropped off several cartons at a shipping company. Later, someone drove off with what appeared to be the same cartons, investigators said. A search found that one of the cartons contained a microwave oven stuffed with an undisclosed amount of cash, investigators said.

But Roden said there is no proof that the seized cartons are the ones that Urrego dropped off or that they were not tampered with after he left them. “It just adds flavor to their case,” he said. “They can damn him by inference.”

The phone calls to Colombia have also been unfairly portrayed in sinister terms, the attorney said. “Even if you are born in Colombia, the U. S. government thinks that, if you call Colombia, it has to be narcotics-related,” he said. “If you ask who he called, they say, ‘We don’t know.’ ”

Roden concedes that Floriberto Urrego “was at least in possession of money that was not declared. Where it came from, I don’t know.”

Referring to Otoniel Urrego, Roden said: “I feel very bad that this old man has been caught up in a situation where his brother was doing untoward activities.”

But even if his client had been involved, which Roden denies, he said it is at best a money-laundering case, which could result in a maximum term of four years in prison. By adding the drug conspiracy charge, prosecutors could put Urrego away for more than 20 years, Roden said.

But Superior Court Judge Charles W. Campbell Jr. has denied several defense motions to have the charges dismissed. And the 2nd District Court of Appeal denied a request by Roden to have the indictment quashed on grounds that there was insufficient evidence.

Grunert, the deputy D.A., said he can prove a cocaine conspiracy even without drugs to show a jury.

“You do it by showing that it can’t be anything but coke money,” Grunert said. He declined to describe his case in detail but said there is ample evidence to connect Otoniel Urrego to the seized cash.

And if he proves that Urrego took part in collecting drug money, he will have proved the drug conspiracy charge, Grunert said, even if Urrego never handled any drugs.

“In a conspiracy, it takes everybody working together,” he said. “The end goal is the same, to manufacture and sell as much as possible.”