http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6844840.htmlBeyond a landscaped yard and a privacy fence, in a middle-class neighborhood where kids can ride bikes to a local school, stands a house with a sordid past.
Authorities contend the three-bedroom residence once was regularly stocked with guns, drugs and money, as a secret operations center for a drug cartel smuggling route connecting Mexico, Houston, Louisiana and elsewhere.
The discovery of the house, according to records, was the result of an otherwise obscure investigation called Operation Gator Bait, in which federal agents were looking to take down Willie Jones Jr., a Baton Rouge resident known as “Gator” who was buying as much as $1 million a month in cocaine from Houston.
They also were looking for a Houston woman suspected of doing business with Jones — which is what led them to the house on Magnolia Crest Place in northwest Harris County.
“It definitely was not Tony Montana's place,” an agent said, referring to the gangster played by Al Pacino in the classic movie Scarface. “There was no big furniture, no flat screens, just a regular-looking place.”
Jones' crew, federal agents went to the house 13 months ago, apparently unaware it was anything more than a residence.
It now is proving to be key in understanding how traffickers did their business while trying to hide in what seemed like the last place anyone would look.
So far, authorities have charged at least 33 people in Texas and Louisiana with drug and weapons trafficking, as well as money laundering. And the investigation continues.
Defendants looking for leniency are cooperating with prosecutors, authorities said.
Secretly monitored
Court papers note that from April 2009 through the beginning of December, 13,100 wired communications were secretly monitored by agents.
As telling as the contraband splayed around the house turned out to be, so were ledgers and other papers and driving instructions for various parts of the country — routes apparently used for the trafficking business.
“The guy on the corner, he got it from somebody, who got it from somebody, who got it from an international drug cartel,” said David Dugas, chief federal prosecutor for the Middle District of Louisiana. “As we find tentacles of different organizations, we can work up the chain and dismantle major drug-trafficking organizations.”
An affidavit by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives paints the house as a sort of satellite office for Mexico's Gulf Cartel and its partners known as Los Zetas.
Body armor in the master bathroom, a “machine gun” with a silencer on the floor by a bed, money-counting machines, night-vision equipment, hundreds of plastic bags for packaging drugs in resale quantities and machinery for packing the narcotics were found.
Of the 27 high-powered weapons found in the house, some had rounds chambered and were ready to be fired as if positioned for security, while others were disassembled and appeared ready for smuggling back to Mexico.
Also, there was $500,000 worth of cocaine, nearly $100,000 in cash, and a duffle bag stuffed with documents.
Records contend the drugs were shipped through the house on the way to markets. Bulk cash proceeds were then shipped back to Mexican suppliers, as were the military-style weapons they needed back in Mexico.
Hiding behind a facade
Neighbors near the home said they weren't aware of the illegal activity.
“They obviously recognized if they could maintain a facade of middle-class respectability, they wouldn't have to worry about anybody stumbling on to their operation,” said Larry Karson, a former Customs Service agent who is now a criminal justice lecturer at the University of Houston-Downtown.
Exactly how authorities learned of the house is unclear, but deputy U.S. marshals found it during a raid that included search warrants for several places in town.
Fugitive found
After a knock at the door, they found their fugitive, Suzanna Voelker, who is accused of running cash and drugs between Houston and Louisiana.
A Texas driver's license in the name of a man who turned out to be a chief supplier for a trafficking group in Louisiana was found in a dresser drawer.
Also, 15 minutes after agents arrived at the house, another alleged drug transporter, a man who was known simply as No. 22 and was apparently unaware of the raid, pulled up in a pickup truck, according to court papers. He was arrested.
The criminals are long gone. The people living there now say they know nothing about its past.
“I wanted to be in a nice place,” said a woman who answered the door recently and said she'd moved from a rough slice of east Houston. “I got tired of hearing all the gunshots.”
Topic: Mexican cartel hides drugs in suburban Houston home (Read 1088 times)