SAN DIEGO - Four baggage handlers at San Diego International Airport were indicted by a federal grand jury Friday on charges that they conspired to smuggle cocaine and methamphetamine onto aircraft by exploiting their ability to pass unchecked through security screening areas. It’s believed to be the first federal drug...

PHOENIX - Drug Enforcement (DEA) Special Agent in Charge Doug Coleman announced today that the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets (OFAC) reported the designation of Jose Guadalupe Tapia Quintero, a Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico based senior lieutenant of the Sinaloa Cartel. Jose Guadalupe Tapia Quintero was designated...

PHOENIX - DEA Special Agent in-Charge Doug Coleman and U.S. Attorney John S. Leonardo, District of Arizona today announced that Michael Rocky Lane, 52, of Scottsdale, Ariz., was sentenced on Dec. 17, 2013 by U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell to 180 months' imprisonment, followed by five years of supervised...

PHOENIX - Drug Enforcement (DEA) Special Agent in Charge Doug Coleman along with U.S. Border Patrol Agent in Charge Sabri Dikman, and Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Special Agent in Charge Dawn Mertz today announced the arrests of 11 of 13 suspected members of the Luis Armando Cruz drug trafficking...

PHOENIX - DEA Special Agent in Charge Doug Coleman and Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne today announced the arrests of six members of the Sanchez Money Laundering Organization in Tucson and New York. Armando Robles Urrea, Gladis Celaya-Reuelas, Noemi Suarez-Montijo, Frank Babcock, Concepcion Suarez-Montijo, and Maria Yvette Sanchez-Arvizu were arrested...

SAN DIEGO - This morning, the Drug Enforcement (DEA) San Diego Field Division's Narcotics Task (NTF) along with the San Diego County Sheriff's Department and Health Advocates Rejecting Marijuana, (HARM) announce the total amount of illegal marijuana plants seized in San Diego County in 2013. During calendar year 2013, NTF...

SAN DIEGO & IMPERIAL, Calif. - In November 2010, special agents with the Imperial County Narcotic Task (ICNTF) initiated a California State wiretap investigation into the importation and transportation activities of a Drug Trafficking (DTO) based in Mexicali, Baja California (BCN), Mexico. Dubbed Operation Cerberus, this investigation targeted Sinaloa Cartel...

SAN DIEGO & IMPERIAL, Calif. - The final tally is in from the 7th National Prescription Take-Back Day this past Saturday, October 26, 2013. DEA and its partners took back prescription drugs at 40 locations in San Diego County and three locations in Imperial County. Over the course of four...

SAN DIEGO - Three suspects are facing federal charges following the seizure of more than eight tons of marijuana and several hundred pounds of cocaine linked to an elaborate cross border tunnel shut down Wednesday night during an operation by federal and local law enforcement agencies. The newly completed tunnel...

PHOENIX - Today, Douglas W. Coleman, Special Agent in Charge of the Drug Enforcement (DEA), announced that this past Saturday, DEA collected over 10,000 pounds of prescription medications, demonstrating the public’s continued appreciation and need for the opportunity to discard unwanted, unused and expired prescription drugs from medicine cabinets, bedside...