The week before the captain of the Aquatravesia oil tanker arrived in Southern California must have been stressful.<\/p>\n
After departing Ecuador en route to El Segundo, members of the crew stumbled upon an unexpected find inside the ship\u2019s garbage \u2014 trash bags filled with cocaine, 430 pounds of it.<\/p>\n
So the captain began interviewing the crew and narrowed in on Ceasar Tubay Gelacio Jr., 43, a Filipino national, according to a news release from the U.S. attorney\u2019s office for the Central District of California news release.<\/p>\n
What they learned from Gelacio was frightening.<\/p>\n
According to prosecutors, Gelacio had met up with a drug courier while docked in Ecuador, and agreed to transport the cocaine to a drug cartel in Mexico while en route to California. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe captain was informed that … small naval crafts with armed Mexican cartel members would be waiting 80 nautical miles from the shore on the evening of May 14 and the early morning of May 15,\u201d the Department of Justice press release said. \u201cIf the drugs were not delivered at this time, additional crafts would be waiting in Mexican waters to board the oil tanker and recover the contraband.\u201d<\/p>\n
To boot, prosecutors said, the captain also \u201creported receiving what he believed were radio calls from the cartel attempting to hail the Aquatravesia prior to a boarding or takeover.\u201d<\/p>\n
So the ship\u2019s captain hailed authorities and was given a new destination \u2014 the area off the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. There, the U.S. Coast Guard boarded the boat, found the drugs after the captain had secured them and arrested Gelacio. The crew member was taken into custody May 21, according to officials.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Gelacio pleaded guilty to one count of knowingly bringing cocaine on a vessel arriving in the U.S., according to the news release.<\/p>\n
He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 19 and faces 10 years to life in prison. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The week before the captain of the Aquatravesia oil tanker arrived in Southern California must have been stressful.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,52838,18219,7268,160012,18057,160010,63,2302,2324,1511,160011,7214,10807,4542,5783],"class_list":["post-398408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-captain","tag-cartel","tag-cocaine","tag-drug-courier","tag-el-segundo","tag-gelacio","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-may","tag-member","tag-news-release","tag-oil-tanker-captain","tag-prosecutor","tag-route","tag-ship","tag-u-s-attorney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}