NEW YORK (WCBS 880) – A Pennsylvania man was sentenced in Brooklyn federal court to 13 years in prison after he was convicted of importing 16 kilos of cocaine into the U.S. in a shipment of chili peppers.
Humberto Baez, 52, was sentenced Thursday after he was convicted in February 2019.
Prosecutors said Baez conspired with others to import cocaine hidden inside a shipping container. The drug was concealed in the flaps of cardboard boxes containing peppers.
The scheme involved using an importing company as a front to smuggle the cocaine from Baez’s source of supply in the Dominican Republic, prosecutors said.
Baez and others arranged two “dry run” shipments containing only produce into Red Hook Terminal in Brooklyn “to establish the appearance of a legitimate business relationship between the exporter and importer,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.
A third shipment that had the 16 kilos of cocaine arrived in Miami in late February 2018. Prosecutors said the drug was destined for Baez’s warehouse in Pennsylvania and that he used the code word “ripe tomatoes” to relay that cocaine was in the cargo.
Law enforcement searched the container on March 1, 2018, and seized the cocaine.
DEA special agent-in-charge Ray Donovan said drug smuggling is a “cat and mouse game” between traffickers and law enforcement, with drugs being recovered “inside coconuts, wheelchairs, animals, people, tombstones, etc. just to name a few.”
NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said Baez was “fueling a violent trade that victimizes New Yorkers.”
“His conviction and sentencing today sends a clear message that the NYPD and our law enforcement partners will stop at nothing to track these kinds of schemes and protect the public from the impact of illegal narcotics,” Shea said.
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