Countywide : Drug Task Force Gets $1.43-Million Check

An arrest last year of suspected drug traffickers helped make Orange County’s narcotics task force nearly $1.5 million richer, authorities said Tuesday.

Federal authorities, citing asset forfeiture laws, on Tuesday presented the county’s Regional Narcotics Suppression Program with a $1.43-million check--one of the largest such financial windfalls in the history of the 6-year-old task force.

The money is already budgeted for various ongoing projects, said the task force chief, Capt. Tim Simon. Using more than 70 agents from the county’s police departments, the Sheriff’s Department and federal agencies, the Regional Narcotics Suppression Program is fully funded with seized assets, Simon said.

Task force officials said the money they received Tuesday was the result of an arrest in South County last Aug. 29.

Task force agents had three Colombian nationals under surveillance for several weeks before pulling two of them over as they drove south along Interstate 5 through Mission Viejo.

The two occupants, identified as Rosa Naranjo, 42, and her son Bernardo Henao, 21, allowed the narcotics agents to search their car, said Sgt. Dan Felix, who oversaw the case.

Inside the rented car, agents found seven canvas duffel bags stuffed with cash, Felix said. Back at the suspects’ Mission Viejo home, agents found Naranjo’s 18-year-old daughter, Sandra Henao, and the other half of $2.36 million in cash seized that day, Felix said.

Bernardo Henao had planned to have the cash laundered in San Diego County, with its ultimate destination Colombia, said Assistant Dist. Atty. Vickie Hix, who prosecuted the case last year. But Henao’s contact was actually an undercover FBI agent posing as a money-launderer in an international narcotics crackdown dubbed Operation Green Ice, Hix said.

The Green Ice investigation, conceived in Southern California in 1989, involved narcotics agents in the United States, Italy, Colombia, Spain, Canada and Great Britain and netted 169 suspects and $54 million, authorities announced last year.

Hix and narcotics officials said Naranjo and Bernardo Henao were employed as money handlers and shippers for drug traffickers. But authorities were not able to learn much more about who employed them or what type of operation they were involved in, Hix said.

Naranjo, Bernardo Henao and Sandra Henao were arrested on suspicion of possession of drug proceeds, Hix said.

Naranjo and Bernardo Henao pleaded guilty and were sentenced to two years in state prison, Hix said.

Hix declined to file charges against Sandra Henao for lack of evidence, she said.