TAMPA, Fla. – The cocaine was hidden in boxes of fruit. It traveled in commercial planes from Colombia and into the United States after a stop in Central America.
That is how federal agents described the trafficking operation that smuggled more than 43,000 kilos of cocaine from 2016 to 2023.
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Two Colombian men were awaiting sentencing in U.S. federal court in Tampa after pleading guilty on Jan. 21 to conspiracy to import cocaine into the U.S.
Federal agents believe Jorge Hernan Gonzalez-Ortiz and Carlos Andres Aldana-Gil counted on the help of corrupt police officers in Colombia.
They dispatched the cocaine from the Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport in Cali to San Andrés where the planes were unloaded.
The traffickers then smuggled the cocaine by boat to Nicaragua or Honduras.
There were dozens of flights until a Colombian national police anti-narcotics unit intercepted a shipment on July 29, 2023, in San Andres.