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Other scams are just as difficult to uncover. In 1988 Customs officers found 2,270 kg of cocaine encased in 1,200 blocks of chocolate shipped from Ecuador. The cocaine bricks had been wrapped in lead to thwart X-rays, but the lead set off metal detectors. The next time, Customs found, the smugglers had switched to heavy plastic wrapping.
The cartel has also buried cocaine in toxic chemicals. In 1989 Customs agents and New York policemen found almost 5,000 kg of the drug inside 252 drums of powdered lye. No sane inspector would poke around in lye, which can inflict severe eye, skin and lung burns. Luckily, someone had tipped off the authorities.
The cocaine bricks unearthed from the lye were marked with a destination code, "Baby I." The same marking had been found on an 18,000-kg seizure near Los Angeles two months earlier. Baby I turned out to be a Santacruz protege in New York, Luis ("Leto") Delio Lopez, 28. His style, according to DEA agents, embodied the typical Cali cartel executive: businesslike, resourceful, hard- working and discreet.
The Cali families are conservative managers, much like other big corporate heads. In the home office sit the chief executive officer and his senior vice presidents for acquisition, production, transportation, sales, finance and enforcement. The logistics of importing, storing and delivering the product to wholesalers are handled by dozens of overseas branches, or cells, overseen by the home office through daily, often hourly, phone calls.
+ Each cell is directed by a Caleno like Leto Lopez and staffed by relatives and neighbors whose salaries are banked in Cali. Their accounts are debited when they make mistakes. The code of conduct is strict: nondescript clothing, four-door family cars, no drunkenness, no loud parties. Also no failures, no excuses, no second chances. This unforgiving system produces few defections: the penalty for dissent is death, not only for cell members but also for their kinsmen back home in Colombia.
Leto Lopez looked no different from his Westchester County neighbors: he wore conservative suits, lived in a $775,000 colonial house and drove an Acura Legend. He opened a public fax service to mix his drug messages with thousands of others dispatched by honest customers. He set up an import business and actually imported South American furniture so that the U.S. Customs Service would think he was a legitimate businessman.
After the highly publicized Baby I bust, Leto stayed away from his house and offices, which DEA agents were watching. One day in March 1990, he happened to drive past a DEA team running another surveillance in Queens. As the agents started tailing him, he whipped his Acura into a fast U-turn and melted into the traffic. The next thing the agents knew, Leto was back in Colombia -- where his luck ran out. At the request of the U.S. government, police arrested him.