DENVER — Federal authorities said Wednesday they seized more than a half-ton of methamphetamine and indicted 15 people following a two-year investigation that disrupted a drug trafficking organization from Mexico operating in Colorado.
Eleven people have been arrested, but four others including the organization’s alleged leader remain free and are believed to be in Mexico, the Colorado U.S. Attorney’s Office announced.
Dave Olesky, Drug Enforcement Administration special agent in charge, said in a news conference that the investigation revealed ties “to elements in Mexico involving the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels.” Olesky did not take questions, and an agency spokesperson declined to elaborate.
Sinaloa and Jalisco, notorious cartels whose names are derived from the Mexican states where they originated, were among eight Latin American crime groups recently designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the Trump administration.
An arrest affidavit said the seized methamphetamine amounted to millions of individual doses.
Most of the 1,115 pounds (505 kilograms) of meth was discovered hidden in the corners of boxes of pear squash that was recently imported from Mexico and found on a property in the Denver suburb of Lakewood in April, the affidavit said.
Almost 100 pounds (45 kilograms) were found on a Greyhound bus passing through Vail in December after investigators got a warrant to track a cellphone used to communicate with a suspected drug dealer.
Authorities were waiting to check the bus when it arrived in the ski resort town, the affidavit said. The drugs were headed to the Denver area, U.S. Attorney Peter McNeilly said.
“This is one supply chain that needed to be broken,” said Marv Massey, acting FBI special agent in charge.
