Five Family Members Held in Drug Raids

Capping a five-year investigation, federal and local authorities fanned out across Los Angeles County on Tuesday morning--from run-down homes in Downey and Los Angeles to remote canyons in the Angeles National Forest--to bust what is reputed to be Southern California’s largest marijuana ring.

Investigators identified the ring as the Cardenas crime family, who they say dealt millions of dollars worth of marijuana harvested from farms hidden in the national forest.

Three separate groves containing at least 500 plants worth $2 million were raided Tuesday morning, and federal authorities say the family has been tied to five other plantations containing more than 20,000 plants.

Authorities annually raid several marijuana farms secluded in remote parts of the forest, but usually can only arrest the hired hands who work the fields--instead of the kingpins, who seldom go near the farms. That made Tuesday’s busts especially gratifying to investigators.

“Today is a good day,” said U.S. Forest Service Agent Rita Wear, whose law enforcement detail spearheaded the five-year investigation.

Five members of the Cardenas family were arrested: the alleged ringleaders, husband and wife Luis and Indelicia Cardenas, 50 and 34; Francisco Cardenas, 70, and Javier Garcia, 46 and Alma Garcia, 18. Three other alleged traffickers--Juan Perez, 23, Carlos Zambrano, 28 and Marisela Velasquez, 19--were also arrested in the early morning sweeps that involved nearly 100 officers.

About 7 a.m., Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and Forest Service agents raided about seven homes from South-Central Los Angeles to the Cardenas home on Nordyke Street in Highland Park. An hour later, helicopters roared through the remote wilderness as dozens of agents and sheriff’s deputies leaped onto ridge tops and swarmed into the canyon bottoms where the marijuana was growing.

As the agents crashed through the brush toward them, four apparent marijuana farmers scrambled up a hillside and fled into the wilderness. On Tuesday afternoon, investigators were still searching for them with the help of dogs.

The camp was typical of the remote spots where growers live for months at a time, investigators said. At the canyon floor were a pair of sleeping bags, plastic bags, shells from a high-power rifle, a jar of mayonnaise and a McDonald’s bag. Deputies found a pair of bullet-riddled cans the growers apparently used for target practice.

Pruned oak trees shared the soil with scores of four-foot marijuana plants, some already harvested, some still a few weeks from being ready. Hoses ran from a small, dammed-up stream to the plants.

Deputy Craig Husbands of the sheriff’s narcotics squad said he recognized Indelicia Cardenas’ handiwork. “She always finds really out-of-the-way places,” he said.

“She has a lot more out there we don’t know about,” he added as a Forest Service agent began counting and uprooting the plants--accidentally upsetting a nest of yellow jackets in the process.

Although marijuana growing evokes images of tie-dyed Grateful Dead fans planting backyard and basement gardens, federal investigators say modern marijuana farmers are more likely to carry high-powered weapons, live on federal lands and work for drug cartels such as the Cardenases.

“They’re not hippies,” said U.S. Forest Service Agent Mike Alt. “They’re organized crime.”

The plantations can be as small as a knot of a few dozen plants in a grove, or as vast as 20,000 plant swaths running up and down canyon walls. Growers favor federal lands, investigators say, because of their remoteness. An additional bonus is that growing marijuana on public lands enables narcotics traffickers to avoid having their own property confiscated under federal seizure laws.

Some growers go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that their plantations are squarely within federal boundaries. One farmer ran an underground water line from his house at the edge of the San Bernardino National Forest to his grove a mile in the forest. Investigators say the Cardenas ring was exceptionally sophisticated, maintaining several sites in various remote locations deep in the Angeles National Forest and selling the harvest throughout California and possibly into Mexico. The groves raided Tuesday were huddled in canyons in the middle of the San Dimas Experimental Wilderness, a protected part of the forest where even hiking is illegal.

Authorities say the plantations are sometimes draped with camouflage cloth. One in the San Bernardino National Forest was ringed with an electric fence to keep out animals and sported fake snakes hanging from the trees.

And although the groves are usually in remote areas, investigators say some are as little as a mile from popular trails. Many are discovered by hikers or hunters, like the two deer hunters in the Los Padres National Forest who blundered into a 10,000-plant grove and were chased out by spooked farmers waving AK-47s.