Mexicans claim cocaine was bought at border casino

Today there are press reports from neighbouring Chetumal that three Mexican nationals are in police custody for allegedly importing cocaine into Mexico, originating from Belize. The trio was arrested after midnight on Wednesday at the military checkpoint just past the customs point at the Mexican side of the border. The three have been identified as Jose Jimenez, Mateo Dominguez and Alfredo Cupertino.

According to the press reports, at one a.m. yesterday morning, two officers at the military checkpoint at Subteniente Lopez searched a blue Silverado pickup truck in which the three men were traveling and which had already been processed by customs and given the green light to proceed. The military officers found two transparent plastic bags hidden under the front passenger’s side of the vehicle with more than two pounds of cocaine. The men were immediately detained, put into the back of a military truck and handed over to authorities in Chetumal. The suspects told the Mexican authorities that the drugs were acquired at a casino at the Belize border. Though they did not say at which of the two casinos they bought the drugs, they did say it was for personal use. The street value of the pure cocaine could run as high as half a million dollars. One press report alleges that one of the detainees is a former police officer, who was assigned to the former governor of Quintana Roo, Mario Villanueva. Villanueva was imprisoned for money laundering offenses. He was released, taken back into custody for the same offenses and on June fourth of this year, he was found guilty and sentenced to thirty-six years behind bars. He is also wanted for conspiracy to traffic and transport cocaine into the United States. The Mexicans would not have been checked on the Belize side of the border since the entrance to the casinos and the Commercial Free Zone are located outside the Belizean customs border checkpoint.