Pot busts net 781 pounds

More than $3 million in drugs: Bond for five suspects set at $1 million each

By Art Peterson

Staff Writer
Posted Saturday, October 1, 2005

Five men, arrested in two major drug busts of the Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group, made appearances Friday in Lake County Circuit Court.

Associate Judge Valerie Boettle Ceckowski set $1 million cash bonds Friday afternoon for three men arrested Thursday as they loaded more than 300

pounds of marijuana into their van at a location in Lake Zurich. That cannabis

has a street value of more than $1 million, said Daniel Shanes, chief of the

drug prosecutions division in the state's attorney's office.

On Friday morning, Judge James Booras heard not guilty pleas from two

Chicago men who allegedly took delivery of 481 pounds of marijuana in Lake Barrington. That cannabis has a street value estimated at more than $2

million.

MEG agents had intercepted the 300 pounds, shipped by commercial carrier

from El Paso, Texas, to a location in Lake Zurich.

They arranged a contact with the three men, who drove a van from the

western suburbs of Chicago to pick up the drugs. The trio was arrested as

they were loading the van.

Nabbed were two brothers, Jesus Loza, 40, of Cicero, and Jose Loza, 50, of Berwyn, along with their friend, Julio Felix Ortega, 29, of East Chicago, Ind.

Each was charged with cannabis trafficking, which carries, upon conviction, a sentence of 12 to 60 years in prison, and possession of cannabis with intent

to deliver, which carries a sentence of six to 30 years in prison.

Shanes said the two drug busts are part of a MEG operation focusing on large trafficking of marijuana. The men arrested "are part of an interstate narcotics trafficking group," he added. The drugs were destined for Lake County and

other parts of the Chicago region, Shanes said.