Posted on 07/15/2017 12:10:31 PM PDT by Eddie01
The head of the Youngstown Federal Drug Enforcement Administration says a recent marijuana-smuggling operation with ties to Warren is the first of its kind he has seen in this area.
In fact, said Bob Balzano, who runs the local DEA office, the only time he has heard of the method being deployed was in April, when a similar discovery was made in Minnesota.
The marijuana was found last week inside the wheel well for a spare tire in a new Ford Fusion which was manufactured in Sonora, Mexico, at a Ford dealership in Kent, after one of the vehicles was unloaded from a car carrier, Balzano said.
Investigators were then able to find 14 more packages of marijuana in other Fusions, which all came through a rail yard in Warren.
All together, about 14.5 per kilos per car, or 400 pounds of marijuana, was found. It has a street value between $400,000 to $1 million.
The Portage County Sheriff’s Office is also investigating, along with the DEA.
Read more about the case in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.
Anyone that believes that a tire well will hold a million dollars worth of Mexican dirt weed deserves to pay that much for it.
Somebody will buy a new Fusion & get set up in business at the same time.
“Anyone that believes that a tire well will hold a million dollars worth of Mexican dirt weed deserves to pay that much for it.”
Just what I was thinking, few thousand maybe, a half to a million bucks, no way. Fake news.
Not bad. Is this considered to be outsourcing? And with all the states legalizing it for the first time, about the only people with a real problem with it being “imported” is that the government will have a tough time collecting their piece of the action.
Meantime, that picture displays a real start on inventory. And as it isn’t trucked or flown in, this could start a price war. Possibilities are endless.
rwood
There is a great incentive for police agencies to ‘extrapolate’ an amount of drugs they capture to possible street values. It gives the bust a real impressive impact when they use the multiplied value of a single cigarette bought on the street to value the pounds recovered.
Same with all other drugs which are “cut” many times before they are sold at street value.
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