Federal agents watched from the air and ground as three men drove up to Tramore Park in Austell and sold a blue duffel bag of methamphetamine to two Atlanta men in April 2016.
Those three men — Gustavo Bustos, 32; his nephew Luis Bustos, 22; Rogelio Portillo, 25 — were sentenced to prison by a Cobb County judge Thursday, prosecutors said.
In all, police found they had 26 kilos — or about 57 pounds — of meth, according to a news release by the county district attorney’s office.
The men each received sentences of 30 years in prison and were ordered to pay individual fines of $1 million.
The Drug Enforcement Agency was aware ahead of time that the deal was happening, but prosecutors didn’t say how they knew.
Just after the drug sale, authorities pulled over the car of the two men who'd bought the bag and found it contained 10 kilos of meth, prosecutors said.
Authorities then searched the nearby Winchester Court house of Gustavo Bustos where the trio had driven back to. They found 16 kilos of meth and a lab.
Drew Healy, who prosecuted the case, described them as players “in a highly sophisticated, multi-national drug trafficking organization.”
At the sentencing hearing, Cobb superior court judge Stephen Schuster told the men that they “preyed on those addicted to drugs.”
“Justice demands that we help those struggling with addiction,” Schuster said. “To do this, we must punish these purveyors of poison.”
The DA’s office said that the two Atlanta men who bought the drugs — Gustavo Pineda, 31, and 34-year-old Cesar Gonzalez, who also goes by Alejandro Ramirez — were sentenced to 25 years prison and fines of $1 million each.
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