Thirty people have been charged for their alleged involvement in an international drug-trafficking ring which operated through Mexico, the United States and Canada, U.S. federal prosecutors said in Los Angeles on Thursday.
Thirteen of the suspects were arrested Thursday on two U.S. grand jury indictments for conspiracy to export drugs which included heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine from Mexico, through California and into Canada, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a release.
Three of the 13 suspects were arrested in Los Angeles, while others were arrested in the Seattle, Wash., and Vancouver areas the release said.
The suspects were allegedly part of a ring that would exchange the drugs for bulk quantities of ecstasy or cash, the release said. The ring allegedly included members of Canadian, Mexican, Serbian, Chinese and Sudanese organized crime groups, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
The suspects allegedly used military-grade encrypted Blackberry devices to communicate to one another, and employed a sophisticated routine of code names, telephone numbers, coded texts and serial numbers of dollar bills to identify and communicate to one another before, during and after exchanges, the indictments allege.
Law enforcement seized 428.5 kilograms of cocaine, nine kilograms of heroin, 46.6 kilograms of methamphetamine and 46.12 kilograms of MDMA along with approximately CAD$811,000, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
If the suspects are convicted of all charges, they could face a statutory maximum sentence of life in federal prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.
The investigation involved several federal agencies including RCMP, the Canadian Department of Justice, the FBI, the U.S. Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and over 10 police departments in cities across Canada and the United States.
