Undercover Officer Talks About Elaborate Heroin Operation on the Central Coast

A major heroin bust headed by the Mexican Cartels was taken down this week. Authorities rounded up cash, guns, hard drugs, as well as 15 suspects in Monterey County, San Luis Obispo, and Riverside County.

Narcotics Detective Nick Fontecchio of the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office knows the investigation inside and out. In fact he steered it all the way through. “They were pretty mid range dealers here,” said Fontecchio. “There were also the mules or the traffickers that were in the middle and there was a guy in Mexico who was the main guy and he was tied to a cartel.”

The drugs were coming from Sinaloa to Tijuana Mexico, then off to San Luis Obispo. “I think they were either driving it across in vehicles or what they call body packing which is to take a pound of drugs and put it on a person’s body and have them walk across the border with it.”

The operation brought in 6 to 8 pounds of heroin a month, which is easy money for the dealers. “I think they have been doing it for a while with all the guns, they had nice cars, they had a lot of money,” said Fontecchio. “They were taking it and putting it through legitimate businesses.”

According to the Sheriff’s Office Figeroa’s Tires in Atascadero and Cinco De Mayo, a restaurant, in San Luis Obispo were businesses used to launder money.

The Breakfast Buzz is next door to Cinco De Mayo. “There were definitely people who didn’t seem like they were really running the business,” said Gabe Fuentes, of the Breakfast Buzz. “They were always going in and out of the back and they had this one just incredibly flashy car and this guy would come probably a couple of times a week.”

Although this one group has been stopped Fontecchio says someone will come into fill the void. In the mean time the supply of heroin will go down. “It will be harder to get and it will be more, so when the price of drugs go up we are doing our job,” said Fontecchio.