| | |  Americas & Beyond 
Probe Reveals Inner Workings of Ring Shipping Drugs From Mexico to D.C. Area
 Maria Glod - Washington Post
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October 11, 2010
 |  | This was a well-organized, well-funded, efficient distribution ring, and they have been put out of business.
- Neil H. MacBride |  | | |
Virginia State Police Trooper Frank Figgers pulled over a Chevrolet Silverado cruising on Interstate 81 in Troutville. One of the men inside took off running. The reason soon became clear: A bicycle inner tube hidden inside the spare tire held seven kilograms of cocaine worth more than $200,000.
The traffic stop in May was a key break in a months-long investigation into a ring shuttling cocaine from Mexico to the D.C. suburbs. The drugs were sold around the region, in Manassas, Alexandria, Loudoun County and Prince George's County.
"These guys were high-level for Northern Virginia," said Robert Brisolari, assistant special agent in charge with the Drug Enforcement Administration. "They were dealing with a source of supply in Texas that was one step removed from the Mexican cartels. They were a significant supplier."
The crackdown was part of Project Deliverance, a nationwide probe targeting the flow of drugs from Mexico. The project resulted in the seizure of $154 million in cash, 2.5 tons of cocaine, 1,400 pounds of heroin, as well as other drugs, weapons and vehicles.
On Thursday, a federal jury convicted two men in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on a drug conspiracy charge. A dozen others have pleaded guilty.
Their case, which included testimony from those who transported, prepared and sold the cocaine, offered a rare glimpse into the inner workings of traffickers, and the agents and officers who hunt them. It also shows how the Mexican drug wars are having an impact on local communities.
The conspirators used a Fairfax County-based business, J.D. Granite Countertops in Chantilly, as a stash house. They stored and packaged drugs in the shop and used the business to funnel cash. They spoke in an often awkward code during phone calls, using home improvement terms instead of drug lingo to conceal their activity from police.
The defendants referred to the cocaine as kitchens, blond girls or cars. For the really good stuff, they said "Black Galaxy," which is a type of granite. Drug proceeds were "tickets" or "papers." Instead of saying "dollars" when quoting prices, they talked about feet or yards.
The traffickers broke the cocaine shipments down and sold them to lower-level dealers. Ultimately, the drugs ended up in local neighborhoods. One time, agents saw a dealer sell to a young man riding a bicycle in a Herndon parking lot. Another dealer admitted he sold $2,000 worth of the cocaine at a Woodbridge McDonald's and also made sales at local nightclubs.
"This was a well-organized, well-funded, efficient distribution ring, and they have been put out of business," said Neil H. MacBride, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
The link to Mexico
The man Virginia prosecutors say was the boss in the United States - and the link to suppliers in Mexico - is awaiting trial in Texas on a capital murder charge, authorities said. Jorge Gutierrez is accused of fatally shooting two men outside the Pink Monkey Cabaret, a Travis County strip club, in May.
The drug ring had ties to the Zetas drug gang in Mexico, one of the conspirators said.
The investigation in Virginia was launched in December after Arlington County detectives busted a marijuana dealer who told them his supplier brought drugs from Texas, court documents show.
Over the next six months, officers and agents conducted surveillance in Virginia and Pennsylvania, where the ring looked to expand. They wiretapped one conspirator's cellphone and obtained records from another man's phone that showed he traveled from Virginia to Arkansas to Texas. Officers enlisted a confidential informant to buy drugs, listened in on hundreds of calls and snapped photos of the suspects.
The granite-shop owner, Jamin Oliva-Madrid, 30, of Chantilly, was convicted Thursday of a drug conspiracy charge. He and two of his brothers were involved in the ring, authorities said. One brother, Rufino Oliva-Madrid, who has pleaded guilty, was a key link to the Texas supplier.
The conspirators used Inositol powder, a supplement sold in health-food stores, to cut the cocaine, prosecutors said.
Drugs sold quickly
Rufino Oliva-Madrid, who operated out of homes in Loudoun County, had no problem quickly unloading the cocaine, one of the transporters, Javier Maldonado, told the jury.
"He would sell it in two days," Maldonado testified. "He would sell it from his car or his apartment."
Maldonado told jurors that in one instance he was paid $7,000 to drive the cocaine from Texas to Virginia.
When the police informant complained that cocaine he purchased was bad, according to testimony, Rufino Oliva-Madrid returned some cash and gave the informant some higher-quality cocaine.
Alexandria police Detective David Cutting, who is assigned to a DEA task force, told the jury about one afternoon in March when he was watching Maldonado, who had recently arrived in Virginia. Maldonado went to the Sterling townhouse where Rufino Oliva-Madrid lived.
Cutting didn't drive all the way into the townhouse complex, he told jurors, because he was concerned his car would draw attention. Instead, he walked in and took cover in a wooded area. He saw a pickup truck back into the garage and heard clanging, which he suspected was the men unloading cocaine.
Most of the time the drug dealers worked hard to operate in secret, agents said. As Cutting was following Rufino Oliva-Madrid in Northern Virginia, he saw him pull his car into a parking lot and simply sit facing the road. Cutting figured Oliva-Madrid was watching for a tail, and he backed off.
But there were times, prosecutors said, when the conspirators got lazy. Javier Oliva-Madrid carried about $18,000 in rumpled small bills into a Tysons Corner car dealership to help pay for a Toyota 4Runner.
Javier Oliva-Madrid was arrested in June. The agents who raided his granite shop, where he slept, found sandwich bags, a scale and nearly a half-kilogram of cocaine on a plate near his bed. It had a street value of about $15,000.
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