Mexico Under Siege

COVINA ARRESTS MYSTIFY A NEIGHBORHOOD

After Two Mexican Federal Agents and Two Others Were Arrested in July
on Drug-Related Charges, Little Has Emerged About the Case and
Residents Are Puzzled.

The residents of North Monte Verde Drive, a stretch of oak-shaded
suburban calm in the Covina area, normally would feel safe knowing
that two off-duty police officers were visiting the neighborhood.

Not this time. These officers were far from home -- agents of the
Mexican federal police -- and they ended up on the wrong side of a
bust, with a fortune in cash that prosecutors say was tied to
narcotics trafficking.

The raid in July raised the specter that the often-brutal workings of
the Mexican drug trade have reached deep into Southern California.
But five months later, the fuller background of the case remains a mystery.

"We all just sort of went, 'Yikes!' " Susan Wood, a longtime Monte
Verde resident, said of the possible link between her neighborhood
and the mayhem a country away. "This isn't a drug-trafficky area at all."

No connections to Mexican drug syndicates have been alleged in the
Covina case, and defense attorneys say there are none. But
speculation has been fueled by the fact that authorities have been
unusually tight-lipped about the circumstances surrounding the
arrests and the direction of their investigation.

One of the Mexican suspects, a federal police commander based in the
border city of Mexicali, is believed to have been the target of an
assassination attempt there last summer, when gunmen shot up his car
and killed two of his aides.

The commander, Carlos Cedano Filippini, 35, was not in the vehicle at
the time. Mexican media reported that Cedano abandoned his job after
the shooting.

He was the second Mexican federal officer arrested in a Southern
California drug probe in three weeks. Earlier in July, agents from
the state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement arrested Omar Lugo and
another man in Riverside County on suspicion of transporting 154
pounds of cocaine in their car. A judge later ordered the two
suspects released, ruling in favor of defense attorneys who said
officers had lacked probable cause to search the car, said Orlando
Lopez, a special agent in charge for the bureau. That ruling is under
appeal and an investigation is continuing, Lopez said.

Narcotics-related violence in Mexico claimed more than 5,000 lives
last year, as rival drug cartels battle over smuggling routes and
beleaguered government forces press a crackdown. The spoils of the
carnage are narcotics bound for the United States -- Southern
California is a top trans-shipment point -- but there have been few
outward signs here of cartel operations and attendant bloodshed.

Like Wood, other Monte Verde residents said they know nothing about
the case beyond what they had learned in news reports, and very
little about the occupants of the spacious home where the Mexicans
were taken into custody. Some residents were fearful of being quoted by name.

"It's like a TV show," a neighbor said of the case.

Arrested along with the agents were two U.S. citizens, siblings
Hector and Julissa Lopez. Their parents, who live in the
4,800-square-foot house at the end of a long driveway, have not been
implicated, authorities say.

Julissa Lopez, 36, is the common-law wife of Cedano, the commander
from Mexico's Federal Investigative Agency, that nation's equivalent
of the FBI. Also charged is one of Cedano's officers, Victor M. Juarez, 36.

The four have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial in Los
Angeles County Superior Court on charges of possessing more than
$630,000 as part of an alleged drug transaction. If convicted, they
face a maximum of four years in prison.

A stakeout team of narcotics investigators stormed the house and
spotted the defendants walking out of a bedroom, according to
prosecutors. Seized along with the suitcase full of cash were a
money-counting machine, other bundles of currency, heat-sealable
packets for the bills, and lists of payments and debts for narcotics,
authorities say. Defense attorneys have said the lists were innocent
jottings of family activities.

No drugs were found, but a police dog trained to sniff out narcotics
residue showed a positive response to the suitcase and to other items
in the bedroom, investigators say.

A preliminary hearing provided scant insight into the probe, with
testimony focusing mainly on details of the surveillance and search
of the house.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Oscar Plascencia, who is prosecuting the case,
declined to comment, as did officials of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration and the Los Angeles Police Department, which are
conducting the investigation. Shortly after the arrests, a DEA
spokeswoman said the stakeout team had not expected to encounter
Mexican agents at the house, but she did not elaborate.

Mexican authorities did not return phone calls.

The court record already could fill a wheelbarrow. Defense attorneys
have filed lengthy motions seeking to dismiss the charges on grounds
that there was no probable cause to believe a crime had been
committed. They also challenged the bail amounts -- originally $2
million -- and got them reduced.

In addition, the defense has filed a writ with the state appeals
court asking that the case be thrown out because investigators have
refused to answer questions about what led them to the house and why
they had concluded that drug dealing was involved.

"Their case is based on guesswork, not evidence," said Mark Werksman,
an attorney for Julissa Lopez. "All they've got is a bunch of money.
They're trying to make a mountain out of a molehill."

Investigators say they saw Hector Lopez and Juarez arrive at the home
with bags of what appeared to be bricks of drugs or cash.

Later, they say, they stopped a woman who drove away from the house
with a suspicious parcel -- she has not been charged -- and they
discovered that it contained only meat, which Werksman said was for a
restaurant the Lopez family owns. The investigators say they then
entered the house to make the arrests.

To date, Hector Lopez, 33, is the lone defendant to be released on
bail. Attempts to reach him for comment were unsuccessful, and his
attorney did not return calls.

A friend of Julissa Lopez, Heidy Gallegos, submitted a letter to the
court as a character reference. In an interview, she said Lopez's
arrest was "very shocking. . . . It's scary."

Gallegos, a nurse, said she did not believe Lopez could do anything
illegal. She said Lopez helped out at her father's tire business but
otherwise spent all of her time with the three children she has with Cedano.

"She's your typical soccer mom -- very loving. Her priority is her
kids," said Gallegos, adding that she met Lopez when she was her
patient more than a year ago.

Lopez would talk about the strain of having a husband who worked
across the border, Gallegos recounted.

"All she would tell me is that she would miss him, because he had to
travel back and forth with his job," Gallegos said. "I remember the
kids saying how much they missed their dad, how much they loved their dad."

Gallegos also recalled the day that Lopez told her about the attempt
on Cedano's life: "I thought, 'Wow!' I was amazed."

An attorney for Cedano has said his client had to flee to the United
States to escape the would-be assassins. It is not clear what
prompted the shooting in Mexicali.

Neighbors on Monte Verde, which runs along the Covina-West Covina
line, told of having no inkling of trouble at the Lopez home, whose
wrought-iron driveway gate has been adorned with Christmas decorations.

"Everybody was surprised," said one neighbor who resides on the same
side of the street, where old horse corrals share sprawling lots with
newer homes. "We have no problems here."

Virginia Yeager lives in a house that her husband's family built in
1932. She said the neighborhood had changed a lot over the decades,
with newcomers from Latin America and Asia moving in. She said
burglaries are a worry, but there has been nothing to suggest the
faintest echo of a distant drug war.

"I haven't heard about that up here," Yeager said. "You just kind of
keep in your own little enclave."