14 INDICTED IN METHAMPHETAMINE RING

Drug allegedly made in Clear Lake trailer

Fourteen Bay Area residents were indicted this week as alleged members of a
major drug ring that peddled methamphetamine all over Northern California.

Federal sources say the group consisted of two drug sales organizations
that worked together in loose cooperation. One group was allegedly headed
by Everardo Antonio Cardenas, a 29-year-old resident of Hayward, and the
other allegedly was run by an unrelated 33-year-old Lakeport man named Jose
Garcia Cardenas.

The indictment says the ring manufactured methamphetamine -- a powerful
stimulant also known as ``crank,'' ``speed,'' ``meth,'' and ``ice'' -- and
sold the drug in several Bay Area communities in Alameda, Napa, Lake and
Sonoma counties.

All but three of the suspects were originally arrested in connection with
criminal complaints issued March 10.

An indictment that was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Oakland
charges them with conspiring to manufacture and distribute the drug,
possessing and selling it, and laundering some of their profits through the
purchase of a luxury automobile.

During the investigation that led to this week's indictment, authorities
discovered a storage facility for methamphetamine manufacturing equipment
and supplies at a trailer house in Clear Lake. Although authorities did not
seize the actual ``kitchen'' where the drug ring was ``cooking''
methamphetamine, federal sources said they believe the group had the
ability to make from 40 to 60 pounds of the drug every three weeks.

In addition to Everardo and Jose Cardenas, others named in the indictment
are Rigoberto Rodriguez-Lopez, 27, of Vallejo; Santiago Reyna, 37, of
Hayward; Eliud Rodriguez-Lopez, 21, of Napa; Rufino Contreras, 49, of
Dixon; Fernando Chagolla-Guerrero, 30, of Hayward; Aaron Francisco Silva,
26, of Hayward; Francisco Padilla, age unknown of Sonoma; Armando Garcia,
40, of Santa Clara; Luis Manuel Guzman, 30, of Clear Lake; Victor Manuel
Nolasco-Perez, 33, of Lakeport; Johnnie Lee Mathies, 58, of Esparto; and
Sabine Isabella McCown, 35, of Clear Lake.

Chagolla-Guerrero is being sought as a fugitive under an arrest warrant
issued earlier this month. Nolasco-Perez and Silva have been released on
bail; authorities in other jurisdictions are holding two other suspects and
seven remain in federal custody. One person named in the indictment is
assigned to a halfway house facility while awaiting trial, and another is
seeking admission to a drug rehabilitation program.

Federal sources said Rufino Contreras is Everardo Cardenas' father, and is
already confined at Folsom Prison, serving a sentence for an unrelated drug
charge in Solano County last year. In the earlier case, Contreras was
convicted of operating a laboratory for extracting ephedrine, a key
ingredient in making methamphetamine.

Federal sources said that six of the suspects are illegal immigrants from
Mexico .

)1998 San Francisco Chronicle