Mexican drug cartels set up shop across U.S. | The Tennessean | tennessean.com

Mexican drug cartels set up shop across U.S.
4:45 AM, Apr. 23, 2011

 Written by
Richard A. Serrano Tribune Washington Bureau
Filed Under
News

COLUMBIA, S.C.—The house on Knightner Road is small, blue and white, with a stone front porch and a string of Christmas lights still hanging. Here, crack cocaine was sold to drive-up customers a few miles from the state Capitol in Columbia.

The one on Pound Road in rural Gaston, just south of Columbia, is a brown-and-white trailer, with a gravel driveway and woods out back. Here, federal law enforcement officers surprised Frediberto Pineda, who had 10 kilos of cocaine worth $350,000 in his possession.

Six months went by between the first FBI inquiries into cocaine trafficking at the house on Knightner Road and Pineda’s arrest. For the bureau, Pineda was a prize worth waiting for. A member of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, he had quietly settled in central South Carolina, put down roots and began managing one of the gang’s new outposts.

As the cartels expand up and out from the Southwest border, they are sending waves of men such as Pineda, many of them trained in Mexico, to run their U.S. operations. In the last few years, they have established a prosperous retail industry, with cartels staking out “market territories,” lining up smuggling routes, and renting storage bins and drug houses.

Twice deported after less serious convictions, Pineda looked more like a successful businessman than a drug dealer. He drove a Ford Explorer and wore a shiny watch with red and white jewels.

“He didn’t dress like a construction worker,” lead FBI Agent Michael E. Stansbury said.

The look of prosperity corresponded with a booming business. Earlier this month, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller told Congress that upwards of $39 billion a year in drug profits from north of the border is making it back to Mexico and the cartels.

Atlanta is a hub

Atlanta has become a major cartel hub, where cocaine is stored in lockers, storefronts and homes, then trucked to cities such as Columbia, according to federal officials. The Tijuana cartel has set up shop in Seattle and Anchorage, they added. Elements of the Juarez cartel have been busy in four dozen cities, including Minneapolis. The Gulf cartel has reached into Buffalo, N.Y.

When the FBI started looking into the South Carolina drug trade, agents never imagined the investigation would lead them to a Mexican cartel. In all, the effort has led to charges against 116 people in eight separate indictments, 33 firearms seized, four vehicles impounded, 27 wiretaps approved, and $600,000 in cash and well over $1 million in drugs confiscated.

So far, 111 of the defendants have been convicted, while one suspect awaits trail and four fugitives are on the loose.

No one believes Columbia has become drug free, but the city is the first in the nation to have successfully disrupted a cartel that was so deeply ingrained in a U.S. community.

The success is being hailed by law enforcement officials as a major victory.

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