U.S. Seizes Land at Border Near Unfinished Drug Tunnel : Narcotics: Agents believe San Diego lot was the destination of passage from Mexico. Investigators are seeking a Tijuana businessman who owned the parcel.

Federal investigators have seized the property suspected to be the destination of a drug tunnel under the U.S.-Mexico border and are hunting for a Tijuana businessman who owned the land, authorities said Friday.

The suspect, described by authorities as a money launderer for recently arrested Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin (Chapo) Guzman, was identified Friday as Jorge Ramirez Cordova. He bought the lot in Otay Mesa north of the border last year for $1.1 million and began constructing a cannery intended to camouflage narcotics smuggling through the high-tech, subterranean passage, federal authorities said.

“We feel the tunnel was earmarked for this building,” Julius Beretta, special agent in charge for the Drug Enforcement Administration in San Diego, said during a news conference at the unfinished shell of the building.

Few details are known about Ramirez, who is suspected to be in Mexico, Beretta said. Ramirez is apparently a soccer promoter operating in the United States and Mexico and has written a column for an unidentified Tijuana publication, according to authorities.

Ramirez used laundered drug money to acquire and develop the land, according to a civil complaint filed in U.S. District Court. He allegedly bought the parcel, part of an office park in an area dominated by cross-border commerce, under the alias Alberto Parra Zamora, authorities said. A federal judge approved the $2.5-million property seizure Wednesday.

Mexican federal judicial police discovered the tunnel May 31 during a massive search in Tijuana for suspects connected to the airport shooting of a Roman Catholic cardinal in Guadalajara. The killing has generated a crackdown on Mexican drug traffickers, including the powerful Guzman, who was arrested in Guatemala last week. Guzman was reportedly the intended target of gunmen from a rival Tijuana cartel who shot the cardinal instead.

Guzman’s organization allegedly dug the 65-foot deep tunnel, which was equipped with lights and ventilation and stretched 1,417 feet north from a Tijuana warehouse to a road just south of the unfinished San Diego warehouse.

In addition to identifying Ramirez as the property owner, authorities sent a notice of the forfeiture action to John Reynoso, a Los Angeles-area businessman who had an interest in the planned cannery and warehouse, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Leah R. Bussell.

“It is our understanding that he had a lease-holding interest in the cannery that was going to be built on the property,” Bussell said. Reynoso could not be reached for comment Friday. Authorities said they hope to contact him as part of the investigation, which has revealed that the tunnel workers had begun digging their way toward the surface because they thought they were below the San Diego property, Beretta said.

The workers made the mistake by relying on San Diego County maps that erroneously indicate that the property is 1,417 feet north of the spot in Tijuana where the tunnel originates, authorities said.

“They came up 120 feet short,” Beretta said.

The tunnel case is part of a larger investigation involving numerous agencies, as U.S. drug agents try to make the most of the Mexican attack on drug mafias.

In Arizona, U.S. Customs officials suspect that two Mexican fugitives sought in connection with a drug tunnel discovered three years ago in Douglas, Ariz., also took part in the Tijuana operation.

Similar technology and methods used in both sophisticated passageways suggest the involvement of Felipe Corona, an architect, and Rafael Camarena. They allegedly oversaw construction of the Douglas tunnel for Guzman, according to Donald K. Shruhan Jr., special agent in charge in Tucson.

Corona and Camarena spent considerable time in Tijuana, Shruhan said. But the two have not been positively linked to the second tunnel, he said. The Tijuana tunnel is almost five times as long as the Douglas tunnel.

“I was impressed by the Douglas tunnel,” Shruhan said. “But this one here is the Taj Mahal of tunnels.”