Ventura County – Throughout the latter part of the summer, the Ventura County Interagency Pharmaceutical Crimes Unit—involving law enforcement personnel drawn from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, the Simi Valley Police Department, the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office Bureau of Investigation, and the California Highway Patrol—has been actively pursuing leads into those individuals behind increased use and sales of cocaine and a marked uptick in arrests attendant to those drug violations.
According to Ventura County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. Victor Fazio, the IPC Unit, with the objective of “combatting the transfer of legal prescription medication to the illegal market” and of “identifying and stopping emerging drug trends” in the youth population, aggressively investigated all possible leads emanating from that recent flurry of arrests and determined that Marco Cuevas, a 31-year old resident of Sylmar was a key figure behind it all.
Police display the guns found at the Cuevas’ home
Cuevas was placed under law enforcement surveillance and on September 26th he was observed in the city of Moorpark engaged in the act of selling cocaine to a buyer from Ventura County. When contacted, Cuevas was found to be carrying “several ounces of cocaine” on him, and when deputies searched his vehicle—occupied by his wife Sandy Cuevas, 29, and their 5-year old son (who later tested positive for cocaine in his system)—another half pound of coke and more than $10,000 cash were discovered.
Pursuant to the evidence found in Cuevas’ car, a warrant for the search of their residence was served later in the day whereupon additional “evidence of drug sales, several pounds of marijuana, hundreds of pills of prescription drugs, $75,000 in cash, 16 guns, and nearly 3000 rounds of ammunition” were discovered.
Marcos and Sandy were both arrested and booked into Ventura County Jail on various charges, including possession for sale of cocaine, conspiracy to sell cocaine, child endangerment, and multiple weapons violations, with his bail set at a cool $1,000,000.
Photos: Courtesy Ventura County Jail Booking
Read more:
Daily News: California 5-year-old tests positive for cocaine
KTLA: Boy, 5, tests positive after being found next to cocaine
