(WBRE/WYOU) — Two men have been charged after a group allegedly used the United States Postal Service to traffic drugs from Puerto Rico to northeastern Pennsylvania.
After an investigation by the Pennsylvania Office of the Attorney General, Roberto Ivan Mesa Benitez, 26, listed as homeless, and Romulo Ivan Cepeda Benitez, 43, of Wilkes-Barre, were charged after agents say they found the two recovering cocaine mailed from Puerto Rico and transporting it between Luzerne and Lackawanna counties.
Agents say they did a records search on a vehicle that was surveilling homes where the packages were supposed to be delivered. PennDOT records indicated the car was registered to a person on Madison Street in Wilkes-Barre.
According to court documents, on the morning of March 10, a GPS device was installed on the vehicle. A few hours later, agents tracked the car’s movement from Wilkes-Barre to Lackawanna County where they say it circled the areas of South Main Street in Taylor Borough and Sussex Street in Old Forge. This corresponded with addresses where two packages originating from Puerto Rico were expected to be delivered.
The vehicle left the area and traveled to a storage unit near Wilkes-Barre. Agents say the car then drove back to the area of South Main Street in Taylor Borough where a man exited the passenger door and took one of the parcels off of the porch. The two men then returned to the storage unit.
Agents say the two men left the storage unit and traveled to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It was then that investigators notified the Pennsylvania State Police of the operation. Troopers stopped the vehicle in Kidder Township, Carbon County.
During the stop, troopers received permission to search their vehicle.
Inside the car, they say they found two kilograms of suspected cocaine wrapped in cellophane inside a FedEx box with no shipping label. Another parcel was found inside the vehicle with a USPS label that matched the Old Forge address agents were monitoring. Inside that package were three cellophane-wrapped kilograms of cocaine, according to court documents.
