Four months after making an arrest for what local law enforcement officials believed to be a large amount of cocaine, testing has shown to have also included a large amount of heroin, a drug not common to Columbus.
Three illegal immigrants have been charged and indicted with possession of heroin with intent to distribute after they allegedly brought approximately $1 million in heroin into Lowndes County.
Gerard Ortiz Mendez, Tinoco Nieto Silviano and Miguel Angel Camarillo were arrested in March and originally charged with possession of cocaine with intent to distribute after agents with the Columbus-Lowndes Metro Narcotics Unit raided the immigrants’ 1601 College St. home.
All three men are Mexican Nationals who were living illegally in the U.S. at the time of the March raid. Agents discovered what they believed to be more than five kilos of cocaine in the men’s possession. However, when the drugs were sent to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s crime lab, the packaged bricks were determined to include both cocaine and heroin. The heroin totaled up to 1 1/2 kilos (3.1 pounds) with an estimated street value of $1 million.
When tested by the DEA, the bricks of heroin had a 40-percent purity rate. Heroin that is sold on the street typically has a purity rate of 10-to-12 percent purity. In order to achieve street purity, the 1 1/2 kilo of heroin would be “cut ,” producing 5 kilos in street-quality heroin. With heroin selling for $6,000 to $8,000 an ounce and 36 ounces in a kilo, the confiscated heroin could be worth a minimum of $1,080,000.
Meanwhile, a kilo of cocaine sells for an estimated $27,000 to $28,000. Once purchased from the seller, the distributor will cut and distribute the drug, making a potential profit of $75,000 to $100,000 for a kilo of cocaine. A kilo is 2.2 pounds but cocaine usually sells by the ounce or the gram. A gram of cocaine typically sells for $100 on the street and an ounce can be sold for $1,000 to $1,500, depending on the purity.
With 1000 grams in a kilogram, once it is cut and sold by the gram, a kilo of cocaine could potentially be worth $100,000. If the cocaine is not mixed with a cutting agent and sold pure, the four kilos that were confiscated during the March raid could be sold for $400,000. However, cocaine is frequently mixed with other ingredients to dilute the product. If a kilo is cut in half and 50 percent of the drug is mixed with a cutting agent, the drug and the profit is essentially doubled, making the four kilos of cocaine worth approximately $800,000 in street value. Combining the potential street value of both the heroin and the cocaine, Metro Narcotics agents took nearly $2 million worth of illegal drugs off the streets with the arrest.
Heroin is classified as a Schedule 1 narcotic, meaning it has no legitimate medical value and is considered highly addictive. Metro Narcotics Commander Bobby Grimes praised the efforts of his agents and said that, to his knowledge, a heroin bust of that magnitude has never taken place in Columbus.
While it is not immediately clear if the cocaine and heroin were meant to be distributed in Lowndes County, Grimes gave a warning to high volume drug dealers in the area.
“The significance of the seizure is not the drug itself but that those drugs were coming to the streets of Columbus,” Grimes said. “The sheriff, the chief and the Metro Unit are focused on sources and suppliers instead of the people nickel and diming it.”
Grimes also stressed the importance of community involvement and asked that anyone with information regarding illegal drugs contact the Metro Narcotics Unit at 662-327-8217.
Mendez, Silviano and Camarillo, if convicted, will serve time in a federal high-risk security prison. With the amount of drugs seized, the illegal immigrants are facing a minimum of 20 years in the American prison system. They will be deported back to Mexico once they have served their sentence.
The DEA, Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force, the Mississippi Highway Patrol and the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Department assisted in the investigation.
Sarah Fowler covered crime, education and community related events for The Dispatch.
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