San Clemente Coke Bust Caps 5 Days of Border Patrol Seizures of $1.4 Million in Drugs

​Hey, remember that Lake Forest cocaine safe house from Tuesday?

• Julio Cesar Perez-Arellano and Tomas Agustin Della Rocca Held in $4 Million Cocaine Bust

Perhaps some recent U.S. Border Patrol busts produced some of the coke originally headed there.

​Around 4:40 p.m. Tuesday, agents at the San Clemente Border Patrol checkpoint along the 5 freeway became suspicious of a couple acting nervously in a 2002 Volkswagen Jetta, so they were sent to a secondary inspection spot. That's where a canine officer sniffed out something coming from the trunk, and agents then found 14 bundles of cocaine inside two shopping bags. Weighing 30.69 pounds, the blow had an estimated street value of $306,900, according to a Border Patrol statement, which notes the 19-year-old female driver and her 21-year-old male passenger were U.S. citizens.

Meanwhile, the agency's website reveals around 9 a.m. Monday, Border Patrol agents at the San Ysidro point of entry sent a 20-year-old Mexican man on a Yamaha Majesty scooter to a secondary location, where a canine officer detected something snowy coming from the dashboard area. Agents pried it open and discovered more than 12 pounds of cocaine worth $120,000.

Courtesy of Border Patrol

There was more than a lemony scent in those detergent boxes.

​About 10 p.m. Saturday, also in San Ysidro, a 31-year-old American woman behind the wheel of a 2003 Saturn L200 and her 34-year-old female passenger--also a U.S. citizen--were subjected to a search that yielded 12 packages of blow hidden in two boxes of laundry detergent. Weighing 29 pounds, the coke was valued at $294,000.

The occupants of all the vehicles referenced in this post were not identified, but they were taken into custody and their cars and scooter were seized. As was the white stuff, of course.

Border Patrol agents near Murrieta found a different substance behind the panels of a Ford Fusion driven by a woman from Mexico on Friday: methamphetamine, which was bound in 20 bundles, weighed 35 pounds total and was worth more than $700,000.

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