ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, February 28, 1997 TAG: 9702280044
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
LOCAL COCAINE DEALERS started informing on their suppliers seven years ago. After federal agents joined the effort, the ripple effect eventually lapped into the world's mightiest cartel.
Roanoke police hardly could have predicted that their arrest in 1990 of a street dealer for selling an ``eight ball'' of cocaine would lead to some of the world's biggest suppliers, who were indicted in Roanoke last month.
``This guy was so low [on the drug chain], you just couldn't get no lower than he was,'' said Vice Lt. Ron Carlisle.
That lowly arrest for an eighth of an ounce, however, led drug agents to near the top of the world's largest cocaine syndicate.
``This is a classic example of what we try to do [working with federal agents]: a street dealer down here in Southeast Roanoke in a housing project we rode all the way back to Colombia,'' Carlisle said. ``That's the way it should work.''
The street dealer helped police arrest his supplier, as did each successive supplier above him until they got to a local used car dealer who was selling cocaine. He, in turn, informed on Javier Cruz, the man at the top of the chain in Roanoke.
Cruz, another used car dealer, was running cocaine for Colombia's Cali cartel out of his Melrose Avenue Northwest lot. The first car dealer, who has never been charged, was selling the cocaine that Cruz got to keep as a commission for transporting hundreds of kilograms at a time.
Eventually, Cruz and his boss, Leonardo Rivera-Ruiz, became undercover informants after federal agents picked up the case from Roanoke police in 1991. At least six local residents were caught up in Operation El Cid, as the federal investigation was called.
Of the 28 people indicted last month as part of the investigation into Cruz's cocaine network, a half-dozen - in addition to Cruz and his first wife, Pamela, who also was indicted - lived in Roanoke at that time. The 28 face drug-conspiracy and related charges.
Another 13 people were indicted separately this month as a result of a money-laundering sting that Cruz and Rivera worked for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Among the 28 named in the January indictment are people who allegedly drove vehicles loaded with cocaine to and from Roanoke for Cruz, and his real estate agent, who is charged with helping conceal drug money during real estate transactions.
The indictment naming the local residents alleges that several people who worked for Cruz made frequent trips to Phoenix, Los Angeles and Miami to pick up cocaine that was unloaded at a Bent Mountain ``stash house.'' They would later deliver the cocaine to New York and Philadelphia, according to the indictment, transporting millions of dollars' worth at a time.
Cruz called his car dealership Like New Inc., but referred to his drug transportation business as ``the company.''
Earl Wilson, Shannon Wilson Perry, Wendy Gilchrist and Kim and Gene Kinsey are accused of being couriers who drove specially equipped vehicles across the country. Employees of ``the company'' loaded cocaine into campers and cars modified with false ceilings and remote-controlled compartments.
The drop-offs were alleged to work like this: The couriers would drop off the cars at a parking garage in Manhattan and take a taxi to their hotel. A cocaine customer would then go to the hotel and pick up the car keys. After the customer removed the cocaine, he or she would return the keys to the couriers, who would drive back to Roanoke.
Cruz preferred to use young women and couples as drivers to avoid police trained to look for drivers fitting a ``drug profile.''
Gilchrist and Perry declined to comment this week. The others accused of being couriers could not be reached for comment.
F. Earl Frith, a local real estate agent, is accused of money laundering and structuring financial transactions for the Cruzes to conceal the origin of the drug money. Frith denied the charges. He said Wednesday that he wasn't aware that he had been indicted last month.
``I sold the man some real estate ... and that's all I know about it,'' Frith said.
Frith sold the Cruzes a Floyd County farm in 1989, when they were living as ``Luis and Martha Florez'' and posing as dairy farmers with their two small sons. They used aliases because Javier Cruz was wanted on a first-degree murder charge in Charlotte, N.C.
Frith said Cruz accused him to help win points with the government.
``That's what they do when they got caught, isn't it?'' Frith said. ``That's the way they plea bargain - they try to put the thing on anyone they've ever known.''
Asked if he knew Cruz was buying the property with drug money, Frith said, ``Of course not. God, no.''
Court papers filed by the government allege that Frith split a $16,000 cash payment from Cruz into two $8,000 deposits made at his bank on the same day in 1989. Banks are required to report any cash transaction of more than $10,000 to the IRS. Trying to avoid that by breaking up a large amount is a crime known as structuring.
According to an IRS affidavit, Frith was caught on a hidden tape recorder saying that he could help Cruz conceal some drug money, adding that he was not ``a damn police officer. That's not my function.''
It's not clear when prosecutors plan to bring the defendants into court.
U.S. Attorney Bob Crouch said he would not comment to The Roanoke Times about the case.
The newspaper was scheduled to ask a judge to unseal the El Cid file Tuesday afternoon. Crouch and officials from the DEA released the indictments that morning and did not fight the unsealing of most of the file.
However, the U.S. attorney's office did oppose releasing the original 1991 indictment with the names of three people not charged in the new indictment filed last month, which supersedes it. The government argued that the three - one dead, one deported, and one too minor a player to re-indict - had a right to privacy.
The man not re-indicted is Roanoke resident Joseph B. Goria Jr., who was charged with three counts in the original indictment. Goria would not comment.
John Corcoran, a federal prosecutor, argued that the 1991 indictment was no longer newsworthy. Turk seemed to agree at the hearing.
``You've scared them into going ahead and voluntarily giving you 99 percent of what you've asked for,'' Turk told the newspaper's attorney, Stan Barnhill. ``My sympathy goes out to the three.''
Barnhill argued that the public had a right to see the whole file, including everyone the government had indicted in 1991. In its motion to have the file unsealed, the newspaper argued that ``the unjustified secrecy related to Cruz over the past six years has precluded the public from observing whether the U.S. Attorney's Office and the DEA have been advancing the interests of justice and the protection of the public in their dealings with Cruz in this case.''
Corcoran called the news-paper's argument about the case being sealed ``paranoia.''
U.S. District Judge James Turk ruled Wednesday morning that the whole indictment, including the three names in question, must be unsealed.
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