Justice Dept.: One ton of cocaine seized in New York's largest bust in a decade

Nov. 3 (UPI) -- Federal agents have busted a drug conspiracy to transport cocaine into New York, bringing charges against three people and seizing more than a ton of the narcotic, its largest such seizure for the state in more than a decade, authorities said.

The Justice Department announced Tuesday that agents with the Drug Enforcement Agency seized more than 2,000 pounds of cocaine over two days in late September.

Jorge Aponte-Guzman, 33, Nelson Agramonte-Minaya, 37, and Carlos Maisonet-Lopez, 32, were charged in an indictment unsealed Monday in a Manhattan federal court with conspiring to distribute and possess with intent to distribute at least 5 kilograms of cocaine, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison to a maximum of life.

According to court documents, law enforcement agents Sept. 29 were on the lookout for a rental van in New Jersey driven by Aponte-Guzman.

The document states officers watched the van drive from a loading dock in the state to an apparently abandoned residence where they saw Maisonet-Lopez approach the vehicle on foot and Agramonte-Minaya standing in a basement-level unit.

The officers arrested the three suspects and searched the van, discovering shipping pallets and records stating they contained lawn rollers from Puerto Rico with a destination of the Bronx, New York.

The basement-level unit appeared to be outfitted with power tools and furniture covered in plastic to unpack the lawn rollers, the document said.

"Law enforcement officers cut open the 10 lawn rollers that were in the van and seized a total of 460 kilograms of cocaine," according to the charging document, which said the next day officers returned to the loading dock where there was a second shipment of lawn rollers containing the same amount of the illegal drug.

DEA Special Agent in Charge Ray Donovan said the seizure signifies the shifting drug landscape of New York as cocaine confiscations have risen more than 150% in the last year.

"A multimillion-dollar storm of cocaine was seized before it could wreak havoc in the Northeast," he said.