A man federal authorities describe as a drug lord who ran Colorado’s biggest-ever cocaine trafficking organization today was sentenced to 22½ years in prison, with five years on supervised release after that, and fined $1 million.
Oscar Arriola was arrested inMexico in February 2006, after a federal grand jury in Denver indicted him in December 2003. He was extradited from Mexico in March 2010, and later pleaded guilty to charges that he conspired to import and distrubute cocaine, and to money laundering.
After Arriola’s sentencing, DEA Special Agent Barbara Roach called his operation “the most significant international drug trafficking organization ever to operate in the state of Colorado.”
That organization was brought down because of an anonymous tip to a Pueblo crime-stoppers line that indicated a ranch in Peyton was being used to store large shipments of cocaine.
The investigation that followed spanned two years and involved Drug Enforcement Administration offices in Colorado Springs, Denver, Chicago, New York, Albuquerque, North Carolina and Mexico.
Investigators determined that the Arriola organization’s soldiers worked almost constantly, delivering cocaine in 17 states, and then transporting money from the sale of the drugs back to bosses in Mexico.
Ultimately officers seized 5,000 pounds of cocaine, about $50 million in cash and arrested 60 people.
