METH SEIZURE LARGEST IN U.S. HISTORY

Investigators are calling last week's seizure of an estimated $200
million in methamphetamine from a Gilroy home the country's biggest
meth bust on record.

"We cannot find a larger seizure of methamphetamine anywhere in the
history of the United States - anywhere," said Sacramento County
Sheriff John McGinness at a press conference held Tuesday in
Sacramento. "So this is big."

So far, eight Mexican nationals have been arrested in connection with
the bust.

Another suspect, whose name investigators would not release but was
"running the show" from Sacramento, is still outstanding and believed
to be in Mexico, Sacramento Sheriff's Detective Sal Robles said.

"I'm sure he knows who he is," Robles said. "It would be best for him
to turn himself in before the cartel finds him."

The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department's multiagency drug task
forces raided a rural, east Gilroy residence Aug. 19 and hit the
jackpot: 650 pounds of methamphetamine worth an estimated $200 million.

Almost 500 pounds of methamphetamine, in various stages of production,
spilled from kitchen cabinets, bathroom cupboards and bedroom closets.
Large bins of crystal meth glittered like icicles on the floor of an
unfurnished bedroom. And an additional 19 gallons of meth in solution,
the equivalent of another 150 pounds, brought the grand total to just
less than 650 pounds of methamphetamine, said Sacramento Sheriff's Lt.
Fred Links. His team also recovered 15 pounds of cocaine, $35,000 in
cash and two firearms.

Given its purity - about 98 percent - the Gilroy supply could be cut
at least four times before being sold on the street, Links said. That
translates to the equivalent of more than 2,500 pounds of dope on the
street had the raid not occurred, Links said.

The men sent anywhere from $250,000 to $500,000 to their bosses in
Mexico on a daily basis, Links said. On one particularly lucrative
day, their records show a shipment of $650,000 back to Mexico, he said.

Links and members of his team said they were astounded with what they
found inside the house.

"I've never seen anything close," said Robles, who has been working
narcotics for a decade. "For us, a big case would be five, 10 pounds.
Maybe 25. I've never seen that much drugs."

The morning of the raid, investigators arrested three men at the 2250
Roop Road home, which sits about two miles east of the Gilroy outlets,
who they believe are mid-level players in a large Mexican drug
trafficking organization. Fabian Figueroa Ayala, 28, Sergio Murillo
Valencia, 35, and Hector Borraya Salazar, 43, were booked into the
Santa Clara County Main Jail, where they are awaiting transfer to
Sacramento County on multiple felony charges, including possession of
methamphetamine for sale and manufacturing of methamphetamine. Their
charges carry the possibility of life in prison, Links said.

"They're definitely not on the bottom rung because they were entrusted
with the secrecy and possession of a huge cache of drugs," said Bob
Cooke, a former Gilroy police officer and special agent in charge with
California Department of Justice Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement. "But
a shot caller is going to keep himself away from the drugs. They were
somewhere in the middle."

Though authorities believe last week's raid cut off one of the
country's primary methamphetamine manufacturing and distribution hubs,
"another one will open up," Robles said.

"This cartel will regroup," Robles said. "We don't know where though.
We just keep doing what we're doing."

Five others were also arrested in Sacramento in connection with the
drug ring - Oswald Roman, Hugo Soto-Cardenas and Marco Almeida-Soto
back in June and Fausto Diaz and Martin Solorio on the same day as the
Gilroy bust, Robles said.

The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department launched their
investigation about a year ago after learning of a Mexican drug
trafficking organization believed to be bringing sizable amounts of
meth into the Central California area. At the Gilroy home, the men
were converting the drug from its powdered form into the popular
street drug, crystal meth, investigators said.

"They weren't actually making meth, they were crystallizing it," said
Tony Loya, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration special agent of
almost 30 years who now heads up the National Methamphetamine and
Pharmaceuticals Initiative. "They were taking the powdered meth and
icing it up. That was the purpose of that lab."

The methamphetamine found at the Gilroy house likely originated in
Mexico, but because the drug in its powdered form is easier to
transport, the cartel waited until they smuggled it across the border
to convert it to the smokable, crystallized form, Loya explained.

"They don't want to ice it up in Mexico because it takes a bigger
container," he said.

The majority of methamphetamine in the United States either comes in
large quantities from Mexican drug trafficking organizations or is
made on a smaller scale in domestic labs that typically produce enough
for the user and their friends, Loya said.

A key ingredient in the manufacture of methamphetamine is
pseudoephedrine, a chemical commonly found in over the counter cold
and allergy medicine.

"Without that, you cannot make meth," Loya said.

But with a recent ban on the use and trade of pseudoephedrine in
Mexico, drug cartels either have to smuggle the chemical into their
country from overseas or resort to a more old-fashioned method used by
biker gangs in the 1970s and 1980s that produces a less potent version
of the drug, Loya said. Back then, meth manufacturers used an organic
compound called phenyl-2-propanone to cook up their supply, but the
chemical yielded a variety of methamphetamine that packed only about
half the punch of modern day meth, Loya said.

These days, "Mexican drug traffickers cannot get pseudoephedrine in
the same quantities," Loya said. "They do smuggle it in from India and
China but they can't get enough to meet the demand so what they're
doing is going back to the old biker method and using p-2-p."

Loya said he would be curious to learn which type investigators found
last week. Forthcoming lab results should answer that question, he
said. Because much of the crystal meth recovered at the Gilroy home
was tinted blue, a trademark of "the good meth" made from
pseudoephedrine, Loya believes a good portion of the stash was of the
more potent variety.

"Either way, it's a huge hit against the cartel," he said.