SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, (Reuters) – Officials in Puerto Rico and Colombia arrested 17 members of an alleged drug ring yesterday accused of money laundering and smuggling cocaine from Venezuela to the United States.
Last month a federal grand jury in Puerto Rico issued a 23-count indictment against the group of 29. Six were arrested in Colombia yesterday, where three more are wanted. All will be extradited to Puerto Rico, where officials are searching for the remaining nine, said Homeland Security spokesman Ivan Ortiz.
The traffickers used speedboats to ship drugs from Venezuela to the island of Vieques, off the east coast of Puerto Rico. The group laundered the proceeds to Colombia through money transfer businesses and banks in Panama and China, according to a U.S. Department of Justice statement.
Couriers were also used to smuggle hundreds of thousands of dollars of cash back to Colombia, it said.
Officials estimate the group could have imported at least eight tons of cocaine between 2010 and 2012.
In separate drug cases, three men were arrested in Miami earlier this month and are awaiting trial for allegedly importing or planning to distribute cocaine and the club drug MDMA, or ecstasy, for Venezuelan contacts.
Drug smuggling from Latin American through the Caribbean has boomed in recent years after the United States stepped up patrols of its Mexican border following drug-related violence.
“We went from 30 to 35 metric tons of cocaine a few years ago to now close to 100 metric tons,” said Vito Guarino, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Caribbean division.
The routes are similar to those used by the so-called “Cocaine Cowboys” who ran drugs from Latin American to the United States in boats and small airplanes in the 1980s and 1990s.