Colombian Navy personnel indicted in plot to help narcos spy on coast guard ships

USA Today

20-03-2025

Colombian Navy personnel indicted in plot to help narcos spy on coast guard ships Ex-Colombian Navy workers Jair Alberto Alvarez Valenzuela and Luis Carlos Diaz Martinez are accused of helping drug traffickers place tracking devices aboard Colombian Navy vessels.
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U.S. Coast Guard jumps onto moving suspected drug-smuggling submarine
The US Coast Guard cutter Munro intercepted several suspected drug-smuggling vessels, including a semi-submersible vessel and two boats in June 2019.
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A pair of former Colombian Navy employees have been extradited to the U.S. in connection with a plot to assist a narco intelligence operation foil drug interdiction ships from nabbing vessels loaded with cocaine, federal officials announced Monday.
Colombian nationals Jair Alberto Alvarez Valenzuela, 54, and Luis Carlos Diaz Martinez, 32, both worked for the country's Armada Nacional. The U.S. Department of Justice said the pair will stand trial on an indictment for conspiracy to distribute cocaine having reasonable cause to believe it would be unlawfully imported into the United States.
The two men developed sources within the navy who betrayed the location of international law enforcement vessels to drug traffickers, according to federal authorities.
The pair convinced sailors to place GPS tracking devices aboard Colombian Navy vessels, federal court filings say. Colombian drug traffickers monitored the devices to ensure boats laden with cocaine bound for the U.S. avoided detection.
Extradition of the pair is the latest in federal efforts to thwart smuggling on the high seas. The case shows the lengths to which drug traffickers will go to send cocaine to the U.S.
Drug runners in Colombia - the world's leading cocaine producer - move more than 1,000 metric tons out of the country via the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean waters, according to a federal indictment in the latest case.
Law enforcement authorities from Colombia to the U.S. have tried to eliminate maritime drug trade routes for decades. But traffickers have responded with diabolical inventiveness. They deploy everything from fleets of fishermen spies to handcrafted submarines to avoid authorities.
Attorneys for the two did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople for the Middle District of Florida also did not respond.
Authorities involved in the case included the Coast Guard Investigative Service, Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security Investigation.
How did they get the tracking devices on the boats?
The scheme prosecutors say Alvarez Valenzuela and Diaz Martinez were involved in was simple, according to federal court papers: Put GPS tracking devices on Colombian Navy boats tasked with finding smuggling vessels.
Law enforcement vessels seize thousands of kilograms of cocaine from smuggling boats.
The group Alvarez Valenzuela and Diaz Martinez worked for hoped to avoid detection by knowing where some of the biggest drug catching boats were at all times, U.S. prosecutors said. The pair helped find sailors they enlisted to put tracking devices on the boats, authorities said.
Diaz Martinez worked for the Colombian Navy until 2012; and Alvarez Valenzuela retired in 2022, according to an indictment.
Alvarez Valenzuela worked for the Navy as a civil electromechanical engineer at a coast guard station in Urabá, according to reporting by Colombian newspaper El Tiempo. Urabá is an area on the Caribbean coast that's home to some of the most powerful drug traffickers in the South American country.
According to court filings, they and other former navy officials paid active-duty sailors thousands of dollars to hide tracking devices aboard four key vessels: ARC Antioquia, ARC Punta Espalda, ARC 11 de Noviembre and ARC Toledo.
GPS location data included in the indictment shows the areas off the Caribbean they patrolled as well as blind spots off the coast of Panama and near the shores of Colombia approaching Cartagena.
Traffickers used data from GPS devices to direct 'cocaine-laden vessels around Colombian Navy ships,' the indictment says.
They tracked the vessels between November 2022 and March 2023, the indictment says.
Four sailors who put the tracking devices aboard the boats were also named in the indictment, as was a sergeant and an ensign, or low-ranking officer.
Who were they allegedly working for?
The group the former navy employees worked for, according to El Tiempo, is perhaps Colombia's most powerful organized crime group — the Gaitanistas or Gulf Clan.
Clan del Golfo, as they are called in Spanish, is a drug trafficking organization that formed in the early 2000s, according to InSight Crime, a think tank focused on organized crime.
They formed in Urabá - where Alvarez Valenzuela worked - but have expanded throughout much of Colombia.
Urabá remains vital to Gulf Clan. It provides access to the Caribbean and is near the Pacific, allowing the organization to command a lot of the cocaine export from the country, InSight says.
What boats were they monitoring?
The four vessels the group is alleged to have put tracking devices on monitored Caribbean waters around the Golfo de Urabá, according to GPS location data included in the indictment.
They monitored a range of different waters depending on the class of ship.
ARC Antioquia is a missile-bearing frigate built in Germany and is among the most heavily armed vessels in the Colombian Navy. ARC stands for Armada de la República de Colombia.
Punta Espalda is a coastal patrol boat built in its home country. A Colombian Navy publication says it was built primarily for the purpose of intercepting and inspecting potential smuggling boats.
ARC 11 de Noviembre is another coastal patrol boat aimed at trapping drug traffickers, according to the navy. The Toledo is an American-made patrol boat.
More: Narco-submarine crew arrested in plot to ferry thousands of kilos of coke on the high seas
Narco-subs and fishermen spies
Corrupting authorities responsible for finding drug traffickers is just one of the many ways smugglers aim to bring cocaine to the U.S. undetected by law enforcement.
Narco-submarines have become a significant force in the international drug trade, allowing smugglers to surreptitiously move Colombian cocaine around the world.
The handcrafted vessels are usually not true submarines. Part of the vehicle sticks out of the water. But they are camouflaged to avoid naval patrols and deliver potentially tens of millions of dollars of cocaine per vessel.
Drug traffickers are suspected of having adopted narco-submarines as early as the late '80s when U.S. authorities cracked down on the powerboats and low-flying aircraft used to bring in drugs then.
By 2009, law enforcement authorities said over a third of the drugs smuggled into the U.S. came aboard the submersibles, according to the Washington Post.
Drug traffickers conduct surveillance operations to ensure the narco-subs move through the waters undetected.
A six-man crew of Colombians charged with using a fleet of submarines to ferry over 5,000 kilograms of cocaine to the U.S. developed a network of spies disguised as fishermen to look out for law enforcement boats.
The sham fishermen were positioned along the narco-submarines routes and served to alert the crews to any law enforcement boats patrolling the same waters, according to the Justice Department.
Michael Loria is a national reporter on the USA TODAY breaking news desk. Contact him at [e-mail], @mchael_mchael or on Signal at [phone].