14 Seized in Drug Raid; 2 Evade Authorities

The FBI and Inglewood police arrested 14 people Thursday suspected of being involved in a major cocaine trafficking ring in the Los Angeles area, but said the top importer and another man eluded capture.

The raids followed the unsealing of a federal indictment accusing Esteban Galindo, and 16 others--three of them already in custody--of conspiring to traffic in drugs.

‘He was a big fish in the whole deal,” FBI spokesman Matthew McLaughlin said of Galindo, who wasn’t arrested. “He was overheard on wiretaps saying he’d purchase 20 kilos of powder cocaine every two weeks,” from Mexican suppliers with a pipeline to Colombian cartel leaders.

Colombian drug cartels used to sell directly to street gangs in Los Angeles. But in recent years, they have begun to take an arm’s-length approach, preferring to go through middlemen in Mexico, authorities said.

Authorities said Galindo was one of those pipelines, along with his brother Miguel Galindo, 31, who was arrested Thursday.

The remaining suspects ranged from street-level dealers of cocaine and marijuana to lieutenants of the Galindos, authorities said.

The arrests capped a two-year investigation led by a multi-agency task force, which used wiretaps and other surveillance and undercover techniques to track the drugs from retailers to wholesalers.

“This started at the street gang level and went up through to the supplier,” said Stephen Wiley, special agent in charge of the FBI’s criminal division in Los Angeles. “They were supplying a lot of drugs.”

During the investigation, authorities seized about 60 pounds of cocaine, 380 pounds of marijuana, $35,000 in cash and three firearms.

Those quantities are almost negligible in the overall drug trade in Los Angeles, authorities conceded. But they said the organization was moving similar amounts each week.

The network sold much of its drugs in cities such as Compton, Bell Gardens, Pico Rivera and Inglewood and in parts of Los Angeles, Wiley and other authorities said.

The FBI first started watching an alleged drug dealer named Dan Edward McGraw, agents said.

Agents were able to determine that McGraw was getting his drugs from Jeffrey Richard Mitchell of Los Angeles, and that he, in turn, was purchasing them from a Compton-based trafficker named Nicolas Lopez Rodriguez, according to the FBI and federal prosecutors.

Further investigation revealed that Esteban Galindo was importing the drugs from Mexico and supplying them to Rodriguez and others, authorities alleged.

Those men, except for Esteban Galindo, were arrested Thursday, along with Rodriguez’s wife, Maria, and their son and daughter.

Court documents said Nicolas Rodriguez, 47, used vehicles being repaired at his shop to transport the drugs.

Galindo wasn’t the only one to elude capture Thursday; George Christopher Cooper, also known as “Teco,” also wasn’t home when authorities showed up.