Federal Agents Arrest 2 Men, Seize 3 Pounds of Heroin : Narcotics: DEA says busts in Santa Ana, Anaheim come three months into an undercover operation aimed at trafficking corridor from Mexico to the Southland.

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration has arrested two Orange County men on suspicion of possessing an estimated $1 million worth of heroin with the intent to sell it, an agency spokesman said Wednesday.

*

The arrests Tuesday at the home of each suspect in Santa Ana and Anaheim come three months into an undercover operation aimed at cracking the heroin trafficking corridor from Mexico to Southern California.

Officials characterized the suspects as “the two top-level heroin distributors” in Orange County.

“These two guys were high-level, major heroin suppliers exclusively to Orange County,” DEA Special Agent Ralph Lochridge said. “We generally don’t see traffickers using multipound quantities. This is at the top of the food chain.”

The suspects were identified as Fernando Marquez, 24, of Anaheim and Pedro Ruiz Armenta, 29, of Santa Ana. Lochridge said both were arraigned in federal court Wednesday before U.S. District Magistrate Elgin Edwards on charges of possession of heroin with intent to deliver. They did not enter pleas. Edwards ordered them held without bail at the Federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles.

Lochridge said Armenta is an illegal immigrant from Culiacan, in the Mexican state of Sinaloa.

The two men allegedly arranged to meet an undercover agent posing as a buyer Tuesday at Marquez’s Anaheim apartment and sell him three pounds of Mexican black tar heroin, Lochridge said. The street value of the drug was estimated to be at least $1 million.

After the men showed the agent some of the heroin, DEA agents, together with police from Irvine, Santa Ana and Anaheim, served federal search warrants on both residences.

At Marquez’s Anaheim apartment, in the 1200 block of Sharon Circle, agents found 1 1/2 pounds of heroin, Lochridge said. In the garage of Armenta’s Santa Ana home, in the 2400 block of West Trask Street, they found another 1 1/2 pounds of heroin, ammunition, and a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun, he said, adding that they also found drug scales and other paraphernalia.