Narco-submarine crew arrested in plot to ferry thousands of kilos of coke on the high seas
A federal grand jury indicted six Colombian nationals for operating a narco-submarine fleet to bring 5,000 kilograms of cocaine to the U.S. The crew is being held in Colombia.
Colombian authorities are holding a crew of drug traffickers that a grand jury in New York charged with using a fleet of submarines to ferry over 5,000 kilograms of cocaine to the U.S., federal officials announced Thursday.
The six-man crew — all Colombians between the ages of 39 and 68 — are the latest to be indicted for using what are often called narco-submarines.
The handcrafted vessels are usually not true submarines. Part of the vehicle sticks out of the water. But they are camouflaged to avoid naval patrols and have become a significant force in the international drug trade, delivering potentially tens of millions of dollars of cocaine per vessel.
Authorities in Colombia put the crew’s days on the high seas to a halt when they arrested them on Wednesday. The men are expected to be extradited to New York City.
“With today’s arrests, the defendants’ conspiracy has been torpedoed,” said John J. Durham, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “The United States will not tolerate the export and distribution of dangerous drugs into our homeland. My Office is determined to prosecute these defendants in a federal courtroom in Brooklyn where they will be held accountable for their crimes.”
The men moved drugs aboard the vessels from Colombia to Central America and parts of Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel, federal authorities said. In 2023, they were caught twice “within the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the United States” carrying thousands of kilos of cocaine aboard subs bound for the U.S., according to the indictment.
Crew members are: Elkin Armando Alomia Quinones, 39; Diego Luis Obregon Aguirre, 46; Edwin Obregon Castro, 40; Juan Matias Obregon Castro, 48; Rodrigo Obregon Saavedra, 68; and Narjel Paredes, 55. They face up to life in prison if they are convicted.
“Their ill-intended ingenuity knows no bounds,” said Michael Alfonso, the acting special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in New York. But, “the unified strength and versatility of the U.S. federal law enforcement system has once again stopped a dangerous, allegedly cartel-aligned drug trafficking organization in its tracks.”
Authorities around the world participated in the investigation. Drug Enforcement Administration teams in New York, Bogota, Puerto Rico and Madrid were involved as was the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Puerto Rico and the Cuerpo Técnico de Investigación, an FBI-like agency in Colombia.
Investors, engineers and sham fishermen: What to know about the operation?
The crew of Colombians ran their maritime operation from the South American country’s Pacific coast, according to federal authorities. Colombia has led the world in cocaine production since the days of iconic drug lord Pablo Escobar and most comes from the Pacific side of the country.
Getting the drugs from where they’re made to the rest of the world involves a highly sophisticated organization.
Federal authorities said the Colombian crew’s operation involved everything from financial investors to help hire engineers to develop the vessels to a network of spies disguised as fishermen.
The sham fishermen were positioned along the narco-submarines routes and served to alert the crews to any law enforcement boats patrolling the same waters, according to the Justice Department.
Federal court filings say the crew ran their operation from January to October 2023.
They were caught twice that year with drugs on the vessels “within the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the United States,” according to the indictment. Authorities caught them with 2,312 kilos of cocaine on June 27 of that year; and 3,300 kilos on October 7.
Where do the narco-submarines come from?
Smugglers have used clandestine vessels to move illegal goods dating back to moonshine submarines on the Mississippi during Prohibition.
Drug traffickers are suspected of having adopted narco-submarines as early as the late ’80s when U.S. authorities cracked down on the powerboats and low-flying aircraft used to bring in drugs then.
By 2009, law enforcement authorities said over a third of the drugs smuggled into the U.S. came aboard the submersibles, according to the Washington Post.
Narco-submarine technology continues to improve and now the biggest players can carry over a dozen tons of cocaine worth tens of millions of dollars aboard a vessel. Some even go all the way to Europe.
The vessels are typically handcrafted from fiberglass and painted in ocean colors to avoid detection. They are hermetically sealed, contain diesel or electric engines, and are either self-propelled or carry people who help ensure the drugs get to their destinations.
Mario Pazmiño, former chief of intelligence at the Ecuador Army and a security analyst, previously told the Paste BN Network that "they have two important characteristics: “Their profiled displacement on the coast makes them much less detectable due to their appearance,” and large volumes of drugs “can be loaded and transported quickly.”
For years, they have allowed producers in Colombia and Ecuador to expand their business with the biggest distributors in Mexico, including the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
What are U.S. officials doing about it?
The indictment and arrest of the Colombian crew is just the latest success American officials have celebrated in their efforts to stop narco-submarine trafficking.
Many of the most recent federal cases are out of the Middle District of Florida.
Henry Aguirre-Valois was sentenced to 16 years in federal prison for trafficking $75 million of cocaine aboard a narco-submarine, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa announced last October. The Colombian national and his three-man crew were intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard off the coast of Ecuador in international waters.
They were carrying 2,500 kilos of cocaine, almost 1,000 kilos less than what the six-man Colombian crew was caught with in October 2023.
American authorities also go after the people receiving the vessels.
Eliezer De Leon-Lopez, a Guatemalan man known as “Wiro Loco,” faces up to life in prison after pleading guilty to receiving shipments of cocaine sent aboard narco-submarines crewed by Colombians, according to federal officials in Florida.
William C. Daniels, a spokesperson at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Florida, said they could not immediately answer questions about the cases.
U.S. authorities sentenced the Colombian “Prince of Semi-Submersibles" to 20 years in prison in 2023. Oscar Adriano Quintero Rengifo was known for the business he developed moving drugs from Colombia to Guatemala - where he became a mayor - and ultimately onto cartels in Mexico.
From at least as early as January 2015 through September 2019, the U.S. Coast Guard interdicted at least four vessels, including two semi-submersibles, directly linked to Quintero Rengifo's organization, and involving more than 13,000 kilograms of cocaine, prosecutors said.
Michael Loria is a national reporter on the Paste BN breaking news desk. Contact him at mloria@usatoday.com, @mchael_mchael or on Signal at (202) 290-4585.