DENVER — The largest meth seizure in Colorado history has led to the indictment of 15 people following a two-year long investigation, federal agents announced Wednesday.
Officials with the United States Attorney for the District of Colorado said during a news conference earlier in the day the operation – spearheaded by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies – led to the seizure of more than 1,000 pounds of methamphetamine.
“It is not every day the FBI is able to stand together with our partners to announce the indictment of an alleged drug kingpin and 14 of his associates,” said Marv Massey, a special agent with the FBI. “This is one supply chain that needed to be broken.”
The 15 suspects in this case were identified as Marco Antonio De Silva Lara, Sergio Ivan Arce Lopez, Juan Luis Cabrera Saucedo, Luis Enrique Lopez Lopez, Rigoberto Aranda, Erik Alejandro Benitez Chavez, Robert Shane Gerstner, Joseph Ricardo Menzor, William Joseph Rollins, Brittney Pierce, Francisco Javier Armenta Barraza, Jamie Cash Hoover, Cesar Andres Huizar Guerra, and Trenton Anthony Thompson.
While all 15 face drug charges which carry a potential sentence of up to life in federal prison, Lara is also facing so-called “drug kingpin” charges as an alleged leader of a drug trafficking organization. At least four of the 15 are also being charged with money laundering, which carries a potential sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison.
David Olesky, the special agent in charge of the investigation for the DEA Rocky Mountain field division, said the federal operation had ties to other DEA investigations both at home and across the southern border, involving both the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels. The cartels were designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations by the Trump administration earlier this year.
Federal agents said wiretaps, extensive surveillance as well as undercover operations led to the seizure of the contraband, the largest of which was found in April of this year concealed in corners of boxes of chayote squash at a home in Lakewood, along with freezers, propane tanks, and other equipment consistent with methamphetamine manufacturing or conversion methods.
“The past two years, in total, 1,115 pounds of crystallized methamphetamine were seized and prevented from hitting the streets of Colorado and our nation,” Olesky said.
In December 2024, federal agents seized 96 pounds of methamphetamine from a member of the organization on a Greyhound Bus in Vail. Two months later, 101 pounds of methamphetamine and a half kilogram of fentanyl powder were seized from another member of the organization on a highway in Colorado, federal agents said. Over 700 pounds of methamphetamine were seized from the home in Lakewood, with nearly 50 pounds seized from a home in Arvada in August.
Olesky said that while the drug trafficking organization was based in Denver, the drug operation was also connected to Adams County, Lakewood and Arvada.
He added the DEA’s top priority across the globe is to identify how ingredients for these synthetic drugs are moving out of China and India and into Mexico, which he said was “the main cause for why we are seeing such large quantities” in the U.S.
“Colorado, I think, has always been a place where you bring drugs in; then it can expand to the rest of the country because of our proximity [to] those two major highways,” said Stacey Hervey, an affiliate professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Metropolitan State University of Denver, as she explained why Colorado may be the hotbed of drug activity in the West.
She said even drug busts of this magnitude only go so far in tackling the bigger problem at hand.
“Unfortunately, any time you cut the head off one snake, there's other snakes that are ready to take over," Hervey said. "Until you really get at the root of the problem and the demand for the drug, you're going to continue to see it throughout Colorado and the United States. It’s definitely a problem that we have to be better at addressing and law enforcement has one aspect of that, but there’s a lot of different factors we need to be looking at.”
Federal agents said in total, this operation resulted not only in the 15 indictments and the seizure of over 100,000 pounds of meth, but also in the seizure of approximately $156,000 in U.S. currency, four vehicles, and 22 firearms.
At Wednesday’s news conference, federal officials said 11 of the suspects are now in federal custody, while the remaining 4 suspects are believed to be in Mexico. It was not immediately clear if the feds were working with the Mexican government on bringing them to Colorado to face charges.
The largest meth seizure in state history comes two days after DEA officials announced the single biggest fentanyl bust in Colorado and one of the largest in the country.
Denver7's Adria Iraheta contributed to this report.
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