Dozens of Arrests Quash Major Drug Ring, FBI Says

Authorities on Tuesday broke up what they called a major drug ring run out of San Diego, arresting nearly 100 people across the nation who allegedly were distributing cocaine and marijuana throughout the Midwest and Northeast.

FBI officials said they considered the drug syndicate one of the 20 biggest in the country.

The ring was allegedly headed by a little-known trafficker named Omar Rocha Soto, 37, who was arrested about 1 a.m. Tuesday in the San Diego area by agents who pulled over the truck he was riding in. Authorities, who had him under surveillance, said they feared that he might be trying to flee to Mexico.

Rocha’s wife, 27-year-old Adriana Espinoza, was arrested a few hours later at their home in suburban San Diego.

The couple and dozens of other people were charged with drug distribution, conspiracy and money laundering.

Most of the drugs allegedly came into the country through El Paso, then were distributed via train, tractor-trailer and specially outfitted cars to distribution centers throughout the Midwest and Northeast, including Chicago, New York and Boston.

Federal authorities in San Diego said they do not believe that Rocha was selling drugs to dealers in that city. Rather, he set himself up as a “telecommuting” drug-trafficker who used the couple’s $649,000 home in Rancho Bernardo as his base, orchestrating drug shipments to other parts of the country, authorities alleged.

“He was definitely on his way to being a big, big-time trafficker,” said Errol J. Chavez, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s San Diego office.

A Mexican national, Rocha apparently was living in this country illegally and had moved to San Diego from Chicago about 18 months ago, authorities said. His brother, Fernando Rocha, was arrested in Chicago in April on drug-trafficking conspiracy charges as part of the same investigation, dubbed “Southwest Express.”

Rocha and brothers Daniel, Raul and Angel Sotelo-Lopez of El Paso, who were also arrested, allegedly used Dominican, Mexican and Lebanese organizations in various cities to get their drugs out on the streets.

The arrests mark “the disruption of a major drug-trafficking distribution system” and should make a “significant dent” in pockets of drug trade throughout the country, Assistant FBI Director Thomas Pickard said in announcing the apprehensions at a news conference in Washington.

Others appeared skeptical, however.

Chavez at the DEA said that although Rocha’s operation was growing, it could not compare with the activity of more notorious drug traffickers such as the Arellano Felix brothers, whose violent Tijuana-headquartered enterprise has a widespread impact on the U.S. drug trade.

Indeed, by the standards of modern-day seizures, the volume of drugs confiscated from Rocha’s operation in the course of the one-year investigation was fairly small: 2,727 kilograms (or about 6,000 pounds) of cocaine and 4,158 pounds of marijuana, along with $1.15 million in cash, a Ferrari, seven weapons and other items.

But the purpose of the bust, Pickard said, was to derail Rocha’s burgeoning national syndicate, not to rack up record-setting drug seizures. “We wanted to get them off the streets,” he said.

As of Tuesday evening, federal, state and local authorities had arrested 77 alleged members of the drug syndicate in 13 cities.

Two of those indicted are from Orange County. Saul Padilla, 34, was arrested at his Santa Ana home. Martin Gonzalez Valencia, 37, also of Santa Ana, was already in custody in Orange County on unrelated charges. Both were indicted on charges of conspiracy to distribute marijuana.

FBI officials in Washington were unable to say whether drugs from the organization might have passed through Los Angeles.

In all, nearly 100 suspects were targeted for arrest by the end of the day, federal authorities said.

FBI officials believe that the syndicate got its drugs from nations in Latin America and the Far East.

Several of those unnamed countries were informed of the pending arrests this week, and U.S. officials are hoping to pinpoint the source of the supply.

“We’re trying to capitalize on these leads,” Pickard said.

One supply source, according to authorities in San Diego, may have been a drug cartel based in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, formerly headed by Amado Carrillo Fuentes. Until his death in 1997, Carrillo was considered Mexico’s most powerful drug lord.

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Lichtblau reported from Washington and Ellingwood from San Diego.