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Cops seize 280 pounds of potMon, 02/27/2006 - 1:33pm
By: Ben Nelms
Arrested Monday and charged with trafficking were 41 year-old Union City resident Gabriel Ndengey and 36 year-old Snellville resident Bubacar Touray, according to Union City Police Lt. Lee Brown. Brown said his department was contacted last week about an impending shipment of marijuana by Sheriff’s Office investigators in Riverside County, Calif. That information led to the arrests, the confiscation of three vehicles and a large quantity of marijuana at Spice Clothing on Ga. Highway 138 in the new Wal-Mart plaza, said Brown. Marijuana shipments on Feb. 2 and Feb. 17, both destined to be received by Ndengey at Spice Clothing, totaled 180 pounds with a street value of $205,200, Brown said. Ndengey appeared to be a mid-level distributor whose product would be sold in the metro Atlanta area, according to Brown. “On Friday morning, Feb. 17, we received some information from the Riverside County, Calif., Sheriff’s Department concerning some packages destined for an address in Union City that they believed contained marijuana,” Brown said. “They had intercepted five packages in California and these had slipped by. We initiated an investigation and obtained several search warrants. We executed a search warrant at a business known as Spice Clothing and during that search we recovered roughly 180 pounds of marijuana and arrested the owner of the business and another individual and seized several vehicles.” Though packaged in shrink-wrapped plastic and surrounded with cloth soaked in liquid detergent to mask the scent, Brown said California agents became aware of the Union City-bound parcels after drug dogs alerted on the boxes last week. Unknown were the contents of the other boxes, two or three packages per week for the past few months, that had been delivered to Spice Clothing, said Brown. What Union City agents found at Spice Clothing was much more than unopened boxes of marijuana. Brown said agents discovered and seized numerous items of paperwork and accounting ledgers that indicated the commingling of business funds with the funds gained from the illegal sale of marijuana. At the business, agents seized a 2006 Hummer H2 that had been purchased by Ndengey. Paperwork in the vehicle, said Brown, indicated Ndengey had placed a down payment of $30,000 for the recently purchased vehicle. Brown said retail operations appeared to have been conducted at Spice Clothing, noting that some sales receipts from clothing purchases had been made. He said the store was well stocked, though not a lot of money was found in the cash register. During the execution of a search warrant at Ndengey’s Bluffs Circle residence, agents seized additional paperwork and travel documentation indicating that he had been sending U.S. currency overseas and had been making cash deposits averaging $6,000-7,000 per deposit in domestic bank accounts. The legal status of both men was called into question, Brown said, adding that Touray had arrived in the United States in recent weeks from Gambia and that Ndengey was thought to have entered the U.S. as a stow-away. Agents also discovered that Ndengey was laundering proceeds from the sale of marijuana by using cash to purchase vehicles and then reselling them, Brown said. Agents at the residence seized a 2001 Chevrolet Tahoe and a 2000 Acura TL that appeared to have been purchased using drug proceeds, he added. Agents found the titles for numerous other vehicles at the residence. Brown said a developing trend in the area involves shipping smaller quantities of drugs, 80 pounds or less in the case of marijuana, by common carrier delivery services. “One of the new trends we’re seeing now is shipping small quantities of drugs, be it marijuana or methamphetamine or whatever, through a common carrier. They ship 50-80 pounds (of marijuana) at a time,” Brown said. “The logic behind that is that if you lose one shipment you lose 50-80 pounds, whereas you could lose an entire tractor-trailer load if it becomes intercepted.” Union City agents also seized 100 pounds of marijuana Feb. 6 and arrested 24 year-old Fairburn resident Rodrigo Mendoza, according to Brown. Mendoza was charged with trafficking, reports said. Though the marijuana was also shipped by a common carrier the two incidents did not appear to be connected, Brown said. Union City agents arrested Mendoza after intercepting the marijuana at a vacant Union City residence, he said. Brown said Union City’s proximity to Atlanta, I-85 and the airport makes it easily accessible to various types of spill-over crime. It was obvious Monday afternoon that Brown was satisfied with the recent shipments of marijuana have been confiscated. Those quantities in total are larger than what agents had seen entering the city in years past and is attributable to the new approach to shipping. What lingered in his words, like those of so many others in law enforcement, is the unknown quantities of drugs that never get seized. “It makes you wonder. We intercepted these packages but how many packages got through before we intercepted these. This was just one individual,” Brown said. login to post comments
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