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A policeman shows seized bales of cocaine in Bogotá, Colombia.Fernando Vergara / AP
The United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has extradited the provider from a drug trafficking route originating in Colombia and destined for Pensacola, Florida.
US authorities have arrested and transferred Gustavo Adolfo Pareja, a 26-year-old from Cali, charged with two counts of drug trafficking, one of them for bringing at least one million dollars worth of cocaine into the United States.
Pareja is the alleged cocaine supplier to Daniel Gould and Henry Royer, former members of the Army and National Guard.
The three of them distributed large quantities of cocaine on planes from Bogotá to Florida, according to the Florida Northern District Attorney's Office in a statement.
The DEA has celebrated the extradition of Pareja.
"An alleged source of cocaine supply in Pensacola has been eliminated," said Keith Weis, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the DEA Field Division in Miami.
“It is alleged that Pareja participated in a very brazen criminal plan to open a route to North Florida for illicit drug distribution, which has now been closed.
Now, like others with whom he conspired, he will face serious federal narcotics trafficking charges as a result of his actions ”, he has sentenced.
Pareja is accused of supplying cocaine to former US Army Sergeant Major Daniel Gould and to Henry Royer, a former US Army and Army National Guard soldier.
The two men were charged and sentenced to nine years in federal prison on two counts of conspiracy to traffic large amounts of cocaine.
The sentences were announced by Lawrence Keefe, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Florida last year.
They both pleaded guilty at trial.
Royer admitted to traveling to Colombia with Gould, who placed cocaine in a punching bag and placed it on a United States military plane bound for Florida, according to the prosecution.
The plane landed at Duke Field Military Airport, where Gould and Royer intercepted the package and distributed the 10 kilograms of cocaine it contained in northwest Florida.
Former members of the Army reinvested the money from the first load in a second 40 kilograms of cocaine that would be sold on the streets for more than a million dollars.
In addition, Gould deposited about $ 65,000 in cash on a military plane bound for Colombia to pay for the next purchase.
The investigations began in 2018, when the DEA received information about Gould from the United States Embassy in Colombia.
The former sergeant was discovered when the packages he was carrying were X-rayed and revealed that there was cocaine inside punching bags.
On August 13 of that year the cocaine was seized at the embassy in Colombia while Gould had already returned to Pensacola to receive them.
Pareja, who is in the custody of the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Florida, is the latest piece of the drug trafficking trial in this small northwestern Florida town.
He faces prison charges that could range from 10 years to life in prison.
