Macomb Daily
Macomb County, Michigan -- Three of four defendants were convicted Friday of trying to sell 22 pounds of cocaine, in what an assistant prosecutor called "one of the biggest" drug dealer convictions on state charges in county history.
Rigoberto Cardenas-Borbon, 36, Antonio Perez-Chica, 30, both illegal immigrants from Mexico, and Hugo Moran-Dopico, 49, an Arizona resident with Detroit connections, were found guilty of delivery of more than 1,000 kilograms of cocaine by a Macomb County Circuit Court jury following a 2-week trial. They will be sentenced by Judge Peter J. Maceroni on Jan. 17.
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"This is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, conviction on state charges of a drug dealer in Macomb County," assistant Macomb prosecutor Jurij Fedorak, who prosecuted the case, referring to Cardenas-Borbon.
Police and prosecutors said the seizure of 10 kilograms of cocaine, with a street value of $2 million to $3 million, on Interstate 94 in Roseville in April 2005 halted a test-run by a Mexican cartel of the Detroit drug market.
"This was their first trip here to start selling drugs in this area," said Terrence Mekoski, an Oakland County Sheriff's sergeant and head of the Oakland Macomb Interdiction Team. If successful selling the drugs here through Moran-DoPico, the cartel would have delivered drug loads three or four times more than the 10 kilos, or even more, Fedorak and Mekoski said.
Posted by tyne at December 9, 2006