16 Held, $32 Million in Coke Seized in Beverly Hills

Police have broken up a Beverly Hills cocaine ring with ties to Bogota, Colombia, and Miami with the arrest of 16 people and the seizure of 143 pounds of the drug worth about $32 million on the street, officials said Wednesday.

Undercover agents, setting up drug deals in Beverly Hills restaurants and making the buys in nearby parking lots at night, rolled up the ring of 16 Latin American citizens--most of them Colombian nationals--in a two-month operation that police think

will make a sizable dent in the availability of cocaine in Los Angeles.

“They are major dealers,” said Culver City Police Lt. Bill Burck of the men arrested. “They are not street-type dealers.”

Culver City and Beverly Hills police, aided by state drug agents, set up an undercover buy earlier this month for $2 million worth of cocaine in Beverly Hills, “where the (drug-selling) operation was centered,” Burck said.

Police on March 6 seized 8.8 pounds of cocaine, a cache of arms and $75,000 in cash, arresting five of the 16 suspects.

The investigation continued with more undercover buys and arrests in Beverly Hills and Torrance, which included the seizure of the remainder of the cocaine.

The drug was being dealt out of three apartments in the 20800 block of Anza Avenue in Torrance, investigators said, and one by one members of the ring were stopped and arrested as they left the apartments to distribute the cocaine.

In one instance, police said, officers chased a suspect onto the San Diego Freeway and he allegedly tossed a packet containing $1 million worth of the drug onto the freeway before his car was stopped.

The cocaine, investigators said, originated in Bogota, was smuggled into Miami and shipped here by car and private airplane.

Among those arrested was Reinaldo Guarin, 40, a Colombian citizen residing in Miami, who police suspect is the leader of the alleged ring.

Other Colombian nationals arrested were Jose R. Penagos, 26, who gave a Colombian address; Alexander Garcia, 26, of Bell; Jose Alvarez, 30, of Anaheim; Paco Donairez, 27, of Downey; Edgar Salazar, 42, of Miami; Jaime Garcia, 44, of Miami; Pablo Mejia, 36, of Hacienda Heights, and Reinaldo Ardila, 29, of North Hollywood.

Also arrested were Pedro Gonzalez, 39, a Costa Rican living in Torrance, and Juan Linares, 27, a Venezuelan living in Santa Monica. Culver City police declined to release the names of the first five arrested, pending the completion of their investigation. Bail was set initially in excess of $350,000 for most of the suspects and, in several cases, as high as $10 million.

Although the bail has been substantially lowered for some, most of the suspects remain in jail, booked for investigation of the sale of cocaine and conspiracy.