The drug kingpin who federal law enforcement officials said supplied more cocaine and marijuana to the D.C. area than anyone in history is awaiting sentencing in a Maryland jail, arrested after being betrayed by his local distributor
The Drug Enforcement Administration says it has dismanlted the vast network operated by Reuben F. Lopez who packed tractor-trailers with hundreds of pounds of cocaine and thousands of pounds of marijuana and then sent them to Washington, Cleveland, Detroit, Atlanta and Maine. At the height of the 12-year operation, Lopez was responsible for delivering about 110 pounds of high-quality cocaine and 2,000 pounds of marijuana each month to Washington.
Recommended Stories
While in prison, the DEA says Lopez planned to murder two government witnesses. Federal agents stomped out the murder plot and in the process discovered the letters Lopez smuggled out of a Charles County jail with the help of a clergyman.
“He is the biggest dealer we’ve ever arrested in the Washington area,” said one of two DEA case agents who spoke to The Examiner on the condition of anonymity. Lopez’s failing heart has kept him in the hospital and his sentencing date undetermined.
Lopez was arrested in an Alexandria hotel in February 2006. He had flown from Tucson, Ariz., to Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport to pick up $500,000 owed to him by his Washington cell commander, John Pollard. By then, Pollard had been arrested and the duffle bag that followed him into the Days Inn Hotel room was carried by DEA agents. Lopez and Pollard later pleaded guilty to the highest drug-trafficking charges on federal books.
When the agents received a tip on Pollard in 2003, he didn’t appear in any criminal database. The agents found the case tough to crack. Phone taps were impossible with Lopez demanding network members change phones for every delivery.
It was watermelons and a cheap truck driver that broke the case open in late 2004.
After traveling from Arizona to Cleveland and then on to Maryland where he dropped off drugs to Pollard, the driver went home to Maine with a truck still stacked with the watermelons used to hide the drugs.
Trying to avoid fees at a landfill, the driver took the watermelons to the Good Shepherd Food Bank. The two homeless men unloading the melons found 30 pounds of weed accidentally left behind.
Back in Maryland, the DEA agents had just missed the delivery, finding only two garbage cans stuffed with watermelons in a District Heights neighborhood. Months later, the agents read about the weed found at the food bank in news clippings and connected the dots.
“We were able to take a tractor-trailer ride from Arizona to Maine and it gave us the details we needed to crack the network,” one agent said.
