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Parcel From Puerto Rico Delivers Cocaine Arrest

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By JOSH POLTILOVE | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 14, 2008

TAMPA - Postal inspectors in Puerto Rico flagged a suspicious express mail package bound for Polk County.

Turns out it contained nearly 2 pounds of cocaine inside coffee bags, Polk County deputies say.

  Victor Luis Encarnacion

Deputies seized the drugs Wednesday and arrested Victor Luis Encarnacion, 30, of Kissimmee.

The package, addressed to Ariel Mendez at 739 Caribou Drive, Kissimmee, was flagged in San Juan on Monday. It was forwarded to postal inspectors in Orlando, according to a Polk County Sheriff's Office news release.

A narcotics dog indicated there were drugs in the package, and a federal warrant from the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas task force allowed authorities to inspect the package.

It contained 1 pound, 14 ounces of cocaine, deputies say.

The street value is $17,000 to $20,000, said Polk County chief of investigations W.J. Martin.

"Any time you can get it before it hit the streets, you don't know how many people you kept from destroying their lives," he said. "It's a lot of cocaine to hit the street, and a lot of people would be affected by it."

Undercover Polk County detectives and Postal Inspector Nester Perez delivered the package to the Kissimmee address Wednesday, and a man at the home, identifying himself as Ariel Mendez, signed for the package, according to the release. The man later walked out of the home and to the back yard of a neighbor's home, where he hid the package in brush.

Deputies arrested the man, later identified as Encarnacion, and charged him with trafficking in more than 200 grams of cocaine.

"The postal inspector's office in Puerto Rico is to be commended for their diligence in ensuring that this package did not end up in the wrong hands," Sheriff Grady Judd says in a written statement. "And the detectives on the HIDTA Task Force in central Florida did an excellent job with their search warrants and catching this criminal in the act. Agencies working together like this to prevent illegal narcotics from hitting our streets is the only way to win the war on drugs."

Reporter Josh Poltilove can be reached at jpoltilove@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7691.

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