Authorities have charged 31 people following an eight-month investigation into an alleged ring of Mexican traffickers smuggling methamphetamine into California and Washington state. <\/p>\n
About 90 pounds of methamphetamine, with a street value of $5 million, was confiscated during the investigation, according to federal documents. <\/p>\n
The ring allegedly had wholesale distribution cells in Ontario, Fontana and Upland, and in Turlock in the Central Valley. Methamphetamine also was allegedly shipped to a cell in Othello, a small town in eastern Washington, which is best known for growing about half the country\u2019s potatoes made into French fries.<\/p>\n
Ten of those charged are in custody. The rest are at large and presumed to be in Mexico, federal authorities said Thursday.<\/p>\n
Among them is the ring\u2019s alleged leader, Jesus Marquez-Marquez, a.k.a. \u201cDon Chuy,\u201d who remains in Michoacan, a western Mexico state. <\/p>\n
The region is known for heavy immigration into the United States and is where much of Mexican methamphetamine trafficking originated. In the last few years, it has been a main battleground in savage violence among trafficking groups and the Mexican army.<\/p>\n
The ring\u2019s alleged main U.S. distributor, David Jimenez-Pedroza, of Corona, is in federal custody in San Diego.<\/p>\n
If convicted, he and others face life terms in prison.<\/p>\n
— Sam Quinones
<\/br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Authorities have charged 31 people following an eight-month investigation into an alleged ring of Mexican traffickers smuggling methamphetamine into California and Washington state. About 90 pounds of methamphetamine, with a street value of $5 million, was confiscated during the investigation, according to federal documents. The ring allegedly had wholesale distribution cells in Ontario, Fontana and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}