READING, PA \u2014 Authorities say they’ve dismantled a major drug trafficking operation that brought cocaine and methamphetamine into Berks County through the U.S. Postal Service.<\/p>\n
The Berks County District Attorney\u2019s Office announced details of the nearly eight-month investigation during a press conference Friday, calling it \u201cOperation Postal Storm.\u201d<\/p>\n
“The investigation revealed that kilogram quantities of cocaine were being shipped through the United States Postal Service from Puerto Rico to Berks County,” said Berks County District Attorney John Adams.<\/p>\n
Investigators say packages were tracked as they moved through the mail system. Some were made to appear like birthday gifts.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll this was inside the box along with the kilo, which you see at the end here,\u201d said Lt. Nelson Ortiz of the Berks County Drug Task Force, holding up evidence during the briefing. \u201cThe kilo was wrapped in a happy birthday wrapping\u2026 they tried to mask the kilo as much as they possibly can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Authorities executed search warrants at multiple locations across the City of Reading, including homes, a tattoo parlor, and a car dealership.<\/p>\n
“We recovered bulk quantities of cocaine, methamphetamine, 12 firearms, and U.S. currency,” Adams added.<\/p>\n
In total, 17 individuals have been arrested, including alleged ringleaders Kelvin Rodriguez Diaz, Edwin Martinez-Rodriguez, and Osvaldo Reyes Jimenez. Authorities say five additional suspects remain at large.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the other individuals who were charged were customers and were not charged with the amount of charges that those three individuals face,\u201d Adams explained.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, PA \u2014 Authorities say they’ve dismantled a major drug trafficking operation that brought cocaine and methamphetamine into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,10738,10740,10739,10665,1055,1471,736,128,130,129,10664,10737],"class_list":{"0":"post-14164","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-berks-county","9":"tag-berks-county-district-attorneys-office","10":"tag-berks-county-drug-task-force","11":"tag-cocaine","12":"tag-illegal-drug-trade","13":"tag-john-adams","14":"tag-puerto-rico","15":"tag-reading","16":"tag-reading-city","17":"tag-reading-city-headlines","18":"tag-reading-city-news","19":"tag-smuggling","20":"tag-u-s-postal-service"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}