51 Pounds Of Meth Seized At New Jersey Turnpike Rest Area
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - Four New York City men are facing drug-trafficking charges after investigators seized a record-breaking shipment of methamphetamine in New Jersey.
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Fifty-one pounds of the drug, along with 11 pounds of extremely pure heroin, had already crossed the border from Mexico into El Paso, Texas when New York City narcotics investigators picked up the trail.
They investigated by wiretapping phone conversations which led them to the Vince Lombardi Service Area off of the New Jersey Turnpike.
Investigators were there to meet the tractor trailer that had transported over $10 million worth of narcotics across the country.
Bridget Brennan, the city's special narcotics prosecutor, said the indictments in this case and the massive seizure are proof that the violent Mexican drug cartels are certainly our problem.
"Methamphetamine is not historically a drug of choice in the New York area," DEA special agent-in-charge John Gilbride said. "It shows the influence drug traffickers based in Mexico are having in the New York area where they are bringing in methamphetamine and trying to create a market for that methamphetamine."
Jose Mauro Mota, identified as a New York City-based drug kingpin, was one of the men indicted in the case. He is accused of watching the transfer of suitcases from the tractor trailer to a car.
The Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor says the seizure was five times the amount of meth seized in the region in all of last year.
