Keep Bailing

440 pounds of heroin – that’s about the weight of a full grown black bear. Yet Jose Antonio Medina Arreguin, aka ‘Don Pepe,’ has been alegedly able to smuggle one bear-sized shipment of heroin per month into California. Arreguin reportedly did so by driving it across the Tijuana border into San Diego.

Mexican narcotics officers say Arreguin’s operation netted him $144 million a year. They were finally able to arrest the kingpin’s arrest in an attempt to take out the drug market there, after a two year investigation into his dealings,

Ventura County authorities now want to extradite Arreguin from Mexico, for trial.

At a news conference, Ventura County Dististrict Attorney Greg Totten said the King of Heroin’s arrest has “dramatically weakened perhaps the largest drug operation” in the county’s history. Although much of the investigation focused on Arreguin’s drug sales in Oxnard, his activities could be traced all the way from San Diego up to San Jose, officials said.

Totten also said Arreguin operated under the auspices of La Familia, a drug cartel that controls the western state of Michoacan. However, narcotics officers could not link him to the escalating wave of deadly violence that has plagued Mexico as a result.

Arreguin’s capture began with the drug bust of two lower-ranking men. Ventura County Sheriff Deputies, DEA agents, and officers from Oxnard and Downey teamed up to trace the heroin back to Don Pepe in Michoacan. Then their Mexican counterparts found and arrested Arreguin after being asked to do so by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Arreguin, who is looking at a U.S. prison term of 29 years, must be extradited to this country first, but how long that will take is a matter of speculation.

The Ventura Sheriff, Bob Brooks indicated bringing him to a Ventura jail and trying him in a local court would not pose a security problem.