Suspicious parcels sent to South Florida luxury hotels attracting attention
Police say drug smuggling ring is responsible.

By STEPHANIE MURPHY
Daily News Business and Real Estate Writer

Sunday, September 09, 2007

A rash of suspicious parcels delivered to South Florida luxury hotels is drawing close scrutiny from police detectives.

Almost 50 pounds of marijuana arrived in Palm Beach on Wednesday.

"There's some kind of smuggling ring going on here. We believe there are more packages out there," Palm Beach police Sgt. Jim Dean said Friday.

Two days earlier, plainclothes officers had arrested a man in the parking lot of The Breakers, where he'd come to pick up a parcel delivered by UPS earlier Wednesday.

Eduardo Cazadero-Vazquez, 30, was charged with trafficking in marijuana and possession of fictitious identification and taken to the Palm Beach County Jail.

He was still in custody Saturday, with his bail set at $100,000, Palm Beach County sheriff's Sgt. Pete Palenzuela said.

The Breakers alerted Palm Beach police to the package because the addressee was neither a hotel guest nor a resort employee.

After the bomb squad determined the parcel was not dangerous, hotel staff opened it and found about 15 pounds of marijuana, stored as bricks inside a 5-gallon paint can.

Working his way from south to north, the suspect had earlier picked up similar parcels at The Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan and the Four Seasons Resort Palm Beach, Dean said.

Police found those boxes with similar UPS labels inside the suspect's black 2007 Suzuki sport-utility vehicle parked at The Breakers. The combined stashes seized in Palm Beach amounted to 49.3 pounds of pot, police said.

They also found receipts for packages shipped from El Cajon, Calif., to other hotels on the East Coast, from New York to Florida.

Cazadero-Vazquez, 30, is a Mexican national who had been living in the Orlando area, Dean said.

Palm Beach Detective Nicholas Caristo said Wednesday that Cazadero-Vazquez possessed 20 identification cards bearing his photograph, with each issued in a different name. He had used the name Hector Prada when he called The Breakers to inquire whether the parcel had arrived.

Dean said detectives won't release the other aliases until they complete the investigation and "locate any further boxes. The situation is ongoing."

The three local resorts are large hotels with sophisticated mailroom operations. Their staffs are accustomed to handling "truckloads of packages a day, for guests coming and going," Dean said.

On Friday, Ritz-Carlton General Manager Brad Cance said he was astonished that one of the parcels had been picked up there the same day the suspect was arrested in Palm Beach.

If a box were "ticking or something like that, we'd call the police right away," Cance said. Otherwise, a package would be held for no more than 48 hours.

"If the (addressee) were not a registered guest or holding a reservation, it would be considered a suspicious package. We'd hand it over to loss prevention," he said.

If research showed it was not a misspelled name or another member of a group coming to the hotel, the package would be returned unopened to the shipper, Cance said.

"We're so guest-focused, from a privacy standpoint, we would not open it," he said.

Manapalan Public Safety Chief Clay Walker said it sounded like "an innocent handling of a package, because you don't go opening people's mail."

The Four Seasons wouldn't comment about the case Friday other than to say the resort is cooperating with investigators.

"The safety and security of our guests is always of primary importance at Four Seasons," the resort said in a statement.

"We are giving heightened attention to security and all appropriate security measures are in place."

* Daily News Staff Writer David Rogers contributed to this report.

http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/biz/c ... _0909.html