Seventeen people have been arrested in a Jacksonville-based drug ring that was dealing in an estimated 200 kilos of cocaine annually, police said.
Drugs were brought to Jacksonville from Mexico by mail and parcel service and money was taken back to the West Coast by women acting as couriers, Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford said.
Those arrested include a man identified as the Jacksonville ringleader who was found with $72,000 cash hidden in a rental car in June. Drugs were also moved in hidden compartments.
Four people are still wanted by police, including one who is believed to have fled to Jamaica.
The ring began to unravel in June when George Ernest Waziri, 29, was stopped in a car carrying the cash. Waziri was not arrested, but the seizure was a tip that a multi-agency investigation that began earlier in the year was on the right track, investigators said. To be as established as it was, the ring had likely been operating for more than a year.
Waziri was arrested Sept. 29 on two counts of conspiring to traffic in cocaine.
Rutherford said cocaine and marijuana were brought to Jacksonville and distributed to other parts of Florida as well as into Georgia and South Carolina. Money was taken back to California and Arizona.
Arrests in the case began in late summer and were continuing late last month. Three of those still being sought are believed to be in the Jacksonville area.
Seizures include $330,000 in cash, nine vehicles and nine firearms.
Copyright 2011 - The Florida Times-Union, Jacksonville
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
