Two Arrested After 70 Pounds of Meth Were Allegedly Found Under Trap a Door in Their Vehicle

(KNSI) — Two people have been arrested after police say they found $400,000 worth of methamphetamine under a trap door on the floor of a car they stopped in Clearwater.

According to the criminal complaint, police stopped the car on Interstate 94 on Tuesday. They spoke with the driver, 44-year-old Ana Delia Pacheco-Rivera, who told law enforcement she and her passenger, 52-year-old Gabriel Bustos Sandoval, had been in town shopping at the Mall of America for the last several days. Officers learned the two were from Oregon, and the vehicle was registered to someone else. Despite saying they had been shopping, police said there was no luggage in the car—just two dogs in the back seat.

Court papers say a police K9 officer was called in, and investigators say the dog “alerted to the presence of controlled substances inside the car.” During the search, police discovered the vehicle floor was modified to create a large void that operated using a sequence of electrical components inside the car. The criminal complaint says law enforcement “bypassed the electrical feed” and opened the trap, where they found 70 individual packages of wholesale quality meth, which weighed about a pound apiece. In total, police recovered 31,751 grams of meth with a street value of $400,000. Electronic devices removed from the vehicle will also be searched.

Police say they also discovered a Visa card bearing someone else’s name in Pacheco-Rivera’s purse and that the two of them went by several aliases. The criminal complaint says Sandoval tried to “break, crew, and destroy” the ID card in his possession. The ID was allegedly issued in Mexico and bore a different name than the name Sandoval gave the police. Investigators say the two have had several contacts with law enforcement in Oregon and other states.

The criminal complaint says at this time that investigators say they believe Pacheco-Rivera and Sandoval are professional couriers used by trafficking organizations to move drugs around the country.

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