A produce importer in Pennsylvania has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for smuggling cocaine inside boxes of hot peppers, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Humberto Baez, 52, based in Lancaster, was sentenced on Thursday for conspiring to import and distribute cocaine and for possessing with intent to distribute cocaine, according to a DEA press release.
Baez had been convicted of the charges in February 2019.
“Concealing drug shipments with produce is one way drug traffickers try to elude law enforcement. This cat and mouse game evolves over time resulting in law enforcement recovering drugs in various places; such as inside coconuts, wheelchairs, animals, people, tombstones, etc. just to name a few,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge Ray Donovan.
Baez’s smuggling took place between August 2016 and March 2018, according to the DEA. Baez and others hid the drugs inside shipping containers bound for the United States from the Dominican Republic.
At first, Baez and his co-conspirators planned two “dry run” shipments, which only shipped produce, in order to look like a legitimate produce seller.
When a third shipment containing 16 kilograms of cocaine, which had been “concealed in the flaps of cardboard boxes containing chili peppers,” arrived in Miami, Florida, in late February 2018, Baez told his co-conspirators that “ripe tomatoes” would be transported by truck to Baez’s warehouse in Pennsylvania, the DEA said in its statement.
“Ripe tomatoes” was Baez’s code word for cocaine, according to the DEA.
On March 1, 2018, law enforcement searched the containers, found and seized the smuggled cocaine, according to the DEA.
“Today’s sentence demonstrates that this Office and its law enforcement partners are committed to stopping the flow of dangerous drugs into this country and to bringing drug traffickers like Baez to justice,” stated Acting United States Attorney Kasulis.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
