Accused Houston gun runners took the long road - literally
By Dane Schiller
Updated 06:55 a.m., Friday, June 22, 2012
Houston Chronicle
A gold 2007 Toyota Tundra loaded with mattresses, box springs and furniture proved a fruitless prop for a Houston mob of alleged gun runners whose real cargo amounted to at least 14 military-style weapons headed to the border.
The pickup clocked some 2,000 miles across four states in what authorities claim was an intricate mission to elude police and deliver guns to a Mexican drug cartel. Over two days, it traveled north to Oklahoma then crossed New Mexico, Arizona and California before turning toward Mexico.
Its only stops were for food and gas, according to ATF agents who covertly tracked the truck and driver - an accused operative in a Houston-based smuggling ring. Also confiscated were $52,000 in cash and 4,165 rounds of ammunition
Authorities contend the scheme is another in an imaginative string of ploys by traffickers and stands as further evidence that Houston remains one of the nation's leading sources for weapons trafficking due to its many gun stores and proximity to Mexico.
'Whatever it takes'
Six people in Houston - all U.S. citizens - are charged for their alleged roles in the conspiracy to illegally purchase weapons from local gun stores and attempt to smuggle them to Mexico, where they are snatched up on the black market by drug traffickers.
"If they find a weak point, it doesn't matter if it is in Arizona or New Mexico," said Dan Webb, a retired lieutenant with the Texas Department of Public Safety. Whatever it takes to "safely get their merchandise to Mexico - they will do it."
New details about the operation emerged this week as authorities brought another alleged player, Ray Miranda, before a magistrate, contending he would flee should he be freed on bail pending trial. He was denied bail.
"In every case, I don't believe a word the government says until I have verified it myself," said Miranda's attorney. Seth Kretzer. "I attack these cases from every possible angle."
The ATF said it was tipped to the ring in 2010 by a Houston gun dealer who reported a suspicious customer.
That call triggered an investigation that included secretly watching the players, placing tracking devices on at least one vehicle, and wiretapping the phone of Armando Rene Medrano, the alleged ringleader, ATF Agent John McDonald testified in a hearing this week.
As the pickup truck traveled, agents followed. The truck, driven by Christopher Royce Webb, who also is charged, sought to avoid risky corridors, such as Interstate 10, which is known to be patrolled by police, troopers and deputies searching for contraband.
Eventually, it pulled into the garage of a stash house in San Diego, just north of sprawling Tijuana, and was unloaded. The weapons, cash and ammunition, as well as laser sights, were reloaded into two other vehicles that headed for the border.
Agents intercepted the vehicles just as they approached the point to exit the United States into Mexico. One man jumped out and tried to run the rest of the way to Mexico.
Most of the firearms were 5.7-caliber rifles.
U.S. citizens enlisted?
Lost on none of the agents, federal officials said, was the botched Operation Fast and Furious in which ATF allowed a large cache of weapons to slip from the United States into the hands of a cartel.
"There was no way we were going to let those guns get into Mexico," prosecutor Ted Imperato said.
The investigation, being handled by the ATF and the Drug Enforcement Administration, contends the ring enlisted U.S. citizens with clean criminal records to lie to buy the guns. They are accused of claiming the guns were for themselves, when they were really to be sent to drug traffickers.
Some alleged conspirators also are accused of trying to distribute about a ton of marijuana.
Others charged in the case include Medrano's former girlfriend, Sandra Lisseth Landin; ex-wife, Martha Cristina Hernandez; brother, Oscar Medrano; and Ray Delpilar Miranda, who supposedly rented a warehouse used by the ring.
They face from up to five years in prison for gun charges to as many 40 years for drug trafficking.
Houston gun runner
Locked
to Baggy and Pinchegringo.