Mexican Cartel Smuggles More Than 1100 Pounds of Meth to Miami
After smuggling more than 1,100 pounds of crystal meth into Miami, the scheme of six members of a Mexican cartel has been revealed in court documents, as they made their way through Texas concealing the drugs inside in concrete and even dissolving it in buckets of paint.
Based on the announcement of the United States Attorney's office for the southern district of Florida, it is the largest methamphetamine seizure in Miami-Dade County history.
The alleged leader of the United Cartel, Adalberto Fructuoso Comparan-Rodriguez, also known as "Fruto," who was also a former Mayor in a town in Mexico, was arrested in Guatemala along with the smuggling's co-conspirator Alfonso Rustrian after the U.S. requested for their detention in Guatemala on March 30, 2021.
According to Fox News, the group now faces charges of two separate complaints with drug conspiracy after the son of Fruto, Adalberto Fructose Comparan-Bedolla, along with Salvador Valdez, Silviano Gonzalez-Aguilar, and Carlos Basauri-Coto were arrested in Miami for smuggling drugs inside the concrete. Based on the court documents, the cartel made the meth 'undetectable' by concealing it into different kinds of materials.
The statements from the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Juan Antonio Gonzalez, wherein he shared that the significant arrests and drug seizures of crystal meth should serve as a notice to smugglers that the U.S. is working hand-in-hand together with its international partners in tracking those drug traffickers and put them behind bars to bring justice, the Department of Justice posted on its website
Gonzalez also emphasized that they want to keep their connection to keep numerous addicting substances off the streets.
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The Scheme
The truck loaded with concrete arrived in Miami on March 20. However, based on the court documents, the truck was carrying concrete tiles filled with methamphetamine, which Comparan-Bedolla allegedly broke open as they retrieve the drugs weighing, 200 kilograms or around 441 pounds. The other portion of the drugs arrived in the Magic City on March 26, but it arrived mixed in a different material to lessen suspicions, as they were dissolved within five-gallon buckets of house paint.
Since it was mixed into the paint, the members of the Mexican cartel worked carefully in a warehouse for days as they extract the pure crystal meth from the paint. But law enforcement apprehended their operation and stopped its street distribution.
Despite the ongoing crisis at the southern border of the U.S. and the heightened security, still, drug traffickers were finding their ways to transport their illegal product. Paint and concrete are only some of the materials used by Cartels in smuggling drugs across the border.
On Monday, a Border patrol canine sniffed out packages of fentanyl pills that were hidden inside burritos during a checkpoint at immigration in Arizona. The handler of the canine referred the male driver of the vehicle to the secondary inspection of the checkpoint wherein the canine alerted the authorities about the black backpack inside the vehicle. Agents immediately searched the backpack wherein they have discovered a number of small packages with fentanyl pills stuffed inside burritos, ABC10 reported.
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WATCH: Six members of a Mexican cartel smuggled over 1,100 pounds of crystal meth into Miami through Tex - bero906