With a bomb-sniffing dog in the courthouse hallway, accused Mexican drug kingpin Miguel Angel Caro-Quintero pleaded not guilty this morning to charges that he funneled tons of marijuana into the United States during the 1980s.
Caro-Quintero, 46, was extradited from Mexico to U.S. District Court in Denver on Feb. 25 to face charges of racketeering and marijuana trafficking.
Four armed U.S. Marshals surrounded the inside the courtroom of U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Watanabe during the brief hearing.
Watanabe ordered that Caro-Quintero remain in custody without bail after reviewing the 1990 indictment and other reports.
“I do find that probable cause exists to all of those charges,” Watanabe said.
Caro-Quintero did not make any statements during the hearing. He was dressed in a jail-issued white T-shirt, tan pants and blue slip-on shoes.
Federal authorities have identified Caro-Quintero and his older brother, Rafael Caro-Quintero, as leaders of the Sonora Cartel, a major Mexican drug-trafficking organization.
Rafael Caro-Quintero was prosecuted in Mexico for the 1985 kidnapping and murder of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique Camarena.
A federal indictment says that the Sonora cartel moved hundreds of kilograms of marijuana from Mexico to a farm near Longmont and a house in Westminster, which the cartel used as storage and distribution facilities. The cartel also bought numerous vehicles from Colorado dealerships, which they used to transport the marijuana, according to the indictment.
At one point, said investigators, the cartel had more than $1.5 million in its possession in Boulder.
Similar charges against Miguel Caro-Quintero also are pending in the district of Arizona.
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com
