Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Cocaine Chronicles: The Texas connection

The latest big bust: A Camp Lejeune-based Marine ferried shipments of cocaine to Charlotte and money back to Texas, court papers say.

Last April, Burlington police seized $699,771 in cash from Paul Espinoza, an active-duty soldier completing training in Jacksonville, an affadavit shows. After his arrest, Espinoza told authorities he had helped broker a shipment of 40 kilograms of cocaine from an El Paso-based drug operation to Charlotte.

Other men are accused of hiding and selling the drugs from an east Charlotte house (pictured).

They hid cocaine under a shed and wrapped money from drug sales in $10,000 bundles that were vacuum-sealed in Saran Wrap, the affadavit says.

This comes three weeks after other court papers described a separate February 2009 sting. That incident started on South Boulevard and led to 41 kilos of cocaine, reportedly flown in from Dallas.

Click here to read that account.

- Doug Miller, Maria David

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Let's see...most cocaine that hits US streets is shuttled through Mexico. The state of Texas represents more than 50% of our country's border with Mexico and 100% of our eastern border with Mexico. Would it not make sense that Texas is where most Drug cartels shipping to the eastern part of the US would setup shop. If this is hard to figure out for anyone, there's no wonder our economy is hurting. Great work! SMH @ you idiot reporters.