Meth ‘pipeline’ to South Carolina linked to Mexican drug cartel, sheriff says
Deputies in Upstate South Carolina say they’ve broken up a methamphetamine “pipeline” with arrests in Greenville and Birmingham, Alabama, the sheriff’s office said.
Greenville County investigators arrested Jhonatan Ruiz and Juan Carlos Baccerra Zambada Sunday. The sheriff’s office accused the two men of moving “large amounts of methamphetamine” into Alabama and South Carolina.
Deputies seized about 6 pounds of meth from a house in Greenville, along with $7,500 and cocaine, the sheriff’s office said.
Investigators say they can’t be 100% certain the men were members of a Mexican cartel, Cmdr. Bart McEntire said in a press release.
But, he said, “The amount of narcotics being moved, the documented ties uncovered to Sinaloa, and the was US currency was located in this investigation was hidden, definitely raise suspicion that the suspects were moving narcotics for a cartel organization.”
The Sinaloa Cartel took the international spotlight when its most notorious leader Juaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was extradited to the United States in 2017.
Guzman was convicted on numerous drug trafficking charges by a jury earlier this year and was sentenced to life plus 30 years, according to the Department of Justice.
The Greenville County Sheriff’s Office said they uncovered the operation when they found a pound of meth and tracked the drugs back to the two suspects.
Deputies in Birmingham, Alabama, raided two homes there Monday and found another 68 grams of meth, 450 oxycodone pills, 3 grams of cocaine, three guns and more than $23,000 in cash, the sheriff’s office said.
Deputies in Birmingham said they arrested two other people as part of the drug trafficking operation.
