Fla. AG Uthmeier: We Have Dismantled Sinaloa Cartel Cocaine Pipeline into Tampa Bay

EXCERPT:

UTHMEIER: "Hi, good morning, everybody. It’s great to be here in Tampa this morning, I’m joined by Sheriff Bob Gualtieri from Pinellas County, Ryan Shaw, who is special counsel in our office of statewide prosecution. We also have Brian Sarabia, prosecutor with the Sixth Judicial Circuit Bruce Bartlett, who's cross-sworn, working with us on the important case I’m about to address. Today, we’re here to announce that we have dismantled an entire drug trafficking organization that ties to the Sinaloa cartel out of Mexico. What began in July as an initial seizure of about 60 kilos of cocaine and initial arrests didn’t stop there. That in and of itself would have been a major seizure for the Tampa Bay area, but we didn’t stop there. The sheriff’s team and investigators, our prosecutors, FDLE, brave law enforcement, did what they did best — do best. They kept investigating, they kept following leads, they kept asking questions, they kept hunting down more evidence of criminal activity. Ultimately, it would take a team of investigators all the way to Texas and the southern border, where the cartel was shipping thousands and thousands of kilos of cocaine up into the United States, flooding the Tampa Bay market. So what started as an initial seizure, you know, a decent case, turned into a dismantling of the entire stream of cocaine coming into this region from that cartel.”