Cracking the cartel: 43 arrested in huge drug ring

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced Wednesday that authorities have arrested members of a violent Mexican drug cartel that used the metro area as an important base of operations.

Since Tuesday, authorities say they have apprehended 43 alleged members of the “Gulf Cartel” at drug stash houses across the metro area and seized more than $400,000 and large quantities of narcotics.

“We believe these arrests are a substantial blow to the Gulf Cartel,” Mukasey said at a press conference at the federal courthouse in Atlanta.

The Gulf Cartel is known, even to its rivals, for extreme violence, said Michele Leonhart, acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The cartel’s members have kidnapped, tortured and murdered innocent citizens, law enforcement officers, informants and members of rival drug gangs, Leonhart said. Some murders were by beheading, she said.

“We have hit them hard,” Leonhart said, adding that the arrests and seizures have driven up the cost of cocaine and methamphetamine.

Since the investigation, dubbed “Project Reckoning,” began targeting the Gulf Cartel early last year, more than 500 alleged members of its operation have been arrested. Authorities also have seized more than 16 tons of cocaine, 25 tons of marijuana, 1,000 pounds of methamphetamine and $60 million in U.S. currency.

Since Tuesday, 175 alleged members of the cartel have been arrested nationwide, Mukasey said. Three of the cartel’s “kingpins” in Mexico have yet to be captured.

The Gulf Cartel brings drugs up from Colombia into northeast Mexico and then distributes them throughout the United States and then into Europe, authorities said.

Atlanta is used an important distribution hub for the cartel’s operations that stretch up through the Atlantic seaboard and across the Southeast, said Rod Benson, special agent in charge of the DEA’s office in Atlanta.

The cartel’s drugs are brought into the area through commercial trucks and passenger vehicles, hidden in compartments, Benson said. After the drugs are shipped out and sold, large quantities of cash are returned to area houses, put in heat-sealed containers and sent back to Gulf Cartel leaders in Mexico, he said.

Also announced Wednesday was the unsealing of two federal indictments against alleged members of two Atlanta-area “distribution cells.”

Among those indicted were Edgar Rodriguez-Alejandro, 20, of Lawrenceville, allegedly a leader of the Atlanta operation who coordinated drug and cash pickups and deliveries.

“Metro Atlanta unfortunately continues to be a major drug distribution center for the Southeast and beyond,” U.S. Attorney David Nahmias said. “The two cartel cells indicted in Atlanta acted like many shipping businesses, coordinating the transportation of truckloads of hidden drugs and millions of dollars in currency across the country and to and from Mexico.”