A drug trafficker who recruited couriers from Northern Virginia to smuggle large amounts of heroin and cocaine into the United States was sentenced to more than 21 years in prison.
Leopoldo Cabrera-Beltran, 33, of Nebraska, was convicted in federal court in Alexandria of conspiring to import hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of drugs across the Mexican border. He was sentenced Friday.
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The smugglers used secret compartments built into vehicles to hide the drugs, prosecutors said. The couriers were paid about $10,000 to sneak in as much as 10 kilos’ worth.
One of those men was Thomas Earl Breeden Jr., a Fredericksburg man whose role in the conspiracy reads in court documents like a screenplay for a Hollywood thriller:
In 2007, Breeden traveled to Acapulco, Mexico, and left his Nissan Murano for a mysterious man known as “El Presidente.” Breeden returned to Acapulco carrying the title and Virginia license plates for an Isuzu Rodeo. Four months later, Breeden flew back to Acapulco and received a phone message — from a person who turned out to be a government informant — that a drug trafficker had been on his flight and would contact him with further instructions.
The drug trafficker called the following day and told Breeden to meet him outside a Planet Hollywood restaurant. The trafficker then drove Breeden to a garage in Chilpancingo. Inside, Breeden found an Isuzu Rodeo and other vehicles, their back seats strewn about the garage as workers prepared lead- and charcoal-laden compartments for concealing drugs to smuggle them across the border. Lead is commonly used to counter X-ray technology, charcoal to fool drug-sniffing dogs, investigators said.
Breeden drove the Isuzu across the border at Brownsville, Texas, where federal agents searched the sport utility vehicle for 30 minutes. Breeden told the agent he was nervous because he was worried that there were drugs somewhere in the Isuzu.
No drugs were found, and Breeden drove 1,200 miles north to Fremont, Neb., where he met the drug trafficker from his flight and gave him the Isuzu, according to the court documents. When he returned to Virginia, he was told that an envelope would be on the passenger seat of a Pontiac Sunfire parked in a driveway of a residence in Fredericksburg. Breeden found the car and the envelope containing $8,500 in cash.
Breeden was caught after one of the conspirators was pulled over in Georgia and found to have $148,845 in cash concealed in the front fender. Breeden was sentenced to three years in federal prison.
