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    Feds shut down Nashville’s largest cocaine supply chain

    Feds shut down Nashville’s largest cocaine supply chain

    http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/index ... s_id=52996

    By Jared Allen

    October 31, 2006

    Nashville’s largest cocaine “pipeline” has been shut down, Federal law enforcement officials said Monday while announcing the arrest of nine individuals, the confiscation of more than $1 million in cash, and the seizure of 55 kilos of the drug, worth an additional $1.3 million.

    The seizure, which occurred as federal officials capped off a two year investigation by taking down a Mexican cocaine ring on Friday at a residential home in Brentwood, constitutes the second largest cocaine bust in Middle Tennessee history, officials said.

    Joined by members of the Middle District’s drug task force and U.S. Attorney Craig S. Morford, Nashville Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Special Agent in Charge Harry Sommers heralded the cocaine takedown as a fatal hit to Nashville’s largest supplier of cocaine.

    “The organization was a structured Mexican cocaine smuggling and trafficking organization, mostly centered here in Nashville, but also in the East Tennessee and North Georgia areas,” Sommers said, standing before mounds of cocaine in black plastic wrap, as well as stacks of cash and numerous weapons.

    Morford said they built a “virtual pipeline of cocaine that has been coming into the communities of this district from Mexico.”

    Sommers said the organization – the Pineda drug trafficking organization – had been functioning in the area for some time. And while DEA agents began their investigation in October of 2004, it was only over the course of the last several months that the investigation grew to include electronic surveillance and wire taps, he said.

    “This group was …certainly a main source of supply for cocaine in Middle Tennessee,” Sommers said.

    But with Thursday’s seizure and arrest of a total of nine individuals – five Mexican nationals and four U.S. citizens all associated with the Pineda organization – that supply has been gravely interrupted, officials said.

    “We certainly have removed all the cell heads and mid-level managers, transportations specialists, and many of the trafficking level people,” Sommers said.

    Among those arrested was Edgar Rayo-Navarro, who served as the group’s local connection.

    Agents also arrested Jesus Pineda-Camacho and Alfonso Pineda-Camacho, who headed the Pineda organization out of Dalton, Ga., and coordinated the transfer of drugs from Mexico into Georgia and on to Nashville, authorities said.

    Officials estimated the street value of the cocaine to be approximately $25,000 per kilogram, giving the 55 kilograms an estimated street value of $1.3 million.

    “It’s not just the magnitude of this 55-kilo seizure, but it’s the continuity of this as well,” said Morford, referring to the takedown of a significant drug ring that operated largely uninterrupted for years.

    Officials would not give an estimate of how much cocaine they believed to be regularly coming through the Pineda “pipeline.”

    But according to the affidavit against the nine defendants, signed by DEA special agents Herbert M. Bradford, the 55 kilograms seized last week, as well as a 45 kilogram shipment tracked by DEA on Oct. 1, “are merely a representative sample of the drug trafficking activity of this organization.”

    “You can take a look at the affidavit in support of the complaint and look at what’s happened over the four-to-six weeks that are covered there, and look at the different loads just during that brief snapshot... and that may give you some ways to extrapolate evidence,” of the amount of cocaine the Pineda group has brought into Nashville over the past two years, Morford said.

    In addition to taking down members of the drug group at 806 Old Hickory Blvd. in Brentwood, officials said they believe they have identified all of the group’s numerous stash houses.

    “They have a number of residences that are both here around the Metro area... and in other locations around Middle Tennessee,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul O’Brien, who leads the Nashville Office’s criminal unit.

    Officials would not say where the Nashville connection was living.

    “They’re not really long-term residents of Middle Tennessee in general. They move between city, county and national lines fairly easily,” O’Brien said.

    All of the nine individuals arrested remain in federal custody.

    Morford said he expects immigration holds to be placed on the five Mexican nationals. The four U.S. citizens are scheduled to have a detention hearing in federal court on Wednesday.

  2. #2
    Senior Member sawdust's Avatar
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    I hope that don't just deport the 5 mexican nationals. This two-tiered law enforcement in this country is a big mistake. Why deport them and then they will just be right back dealing their drugs again.

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