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More Than 120 Pounds of Heroin Seized in Santa Ana

Friday, February 16, 2007

SANTA ANA, Calif., February 16, 2007 -- A Valentine's Day raid of a suspected drug house netted more than 100 pounds of brown heroin, the largest such seizure in California history and one of the 40 largest brown heroin busts in U.S. history, federal officials said Friday.

The 121 pounds of heroin were discovered late Wednesday by officers with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a house in Anaheim, said William Hayes, assistant special agent-in-charge for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for Orange County.

Officers also seized 34 pounds of marijuana and three pounds of a white powder that is likely methamphetamine, he said. Six people were arrested and held on suspicion of drug possession with intent to distribute, officials said.

The heroin had a street value of up to $6 million, said Wayne Rositano, resident agent-in-charge for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Orange County.

"To take 51 kilos off the street is unprecedented in Orange County and it's unprecented in California," Hayes said. "No community or county is immune to the threats posed by drug trafficking."

The second-largest largest seizure of brown heroin in California history was last year east of Los Angeles, said Sarah Pullen, DEA spokeswoman. In all of 2006, DEA agents in the Los Angeles office seized a total of 176 pounds of brown heroin, she said.

ICE officers found the heroin after U.S. Customs inspectors tipped them off to a car carrying five bundles of the drug that entered the United States from Mexico at the San Ysidro border crossing near San Diego. Immigration officials tracked the car to the home in Anaheim and conducted the raid that night, officials said.

Arrested were Luis Alcantar-Zepeda, 28, Jose Casares-Macias, 22, Jairo Ortiz-Diaz, 26 and Rosendo Churape-Cardenas, 37, all of Michoacan, Mexico; and Jacqueline Pimentel, 31 and Rosa Soto, 26, both of Anaheim. All six made initial court appearances Thursday but have not yet been arraigned.

Hayes said the investigation was ongoing and more tests on the heroin would likely tell authorities its purity, where the poppies used to make it were grown and could even give clues about which trafficking ring or cartel had made it. Many of the bundles of heroin were in plastic bags marked in black marker with a smiling sun -- a certain organization's tag, he said.

"We have a lot more to learn about the organization and their methods," Hayes said. "Clearly, it took more than six people to move this much heroin."

Joel Levine, an attorney representing Ortiz-Diaz, said he hasn't had time to talk with his client at length about the case.

"I don't anticipate knowing much more about this case until a week from now when they start sharing the discovery," he said.

Attorneys for several of the other defendants did not immediately return messages or could not be reached.

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