ATLANTA — Channel 2's Aaron Diamant has learned nearly two dozen people were arrested Thursday morning after an eight-month drug trafficking operation.
[ [PHOTOS: Meth, guns and $125K in cash seized in major drug bust] ]
Drug Enforcement Administration officials said 4 kilograms of meth, several firearms, approximately $125,000 in cash, a small amount of marijuana and meth paraphernalia were seized in the major takedown of an Atlanta-based Mexican drug trafficking organization.
Twenty people were arrested Thursday in Clayton and Fulton counties.
“We do it so we can win, and that’s pretty much what we did today was a win,” DEA Atlanta special agent in charge Robert Murphy said. “Give us a little bit of information and with the resources that are represented here today and some time and this is what we can produce.”
Since August, the investigation into the Sinaloan cartel has led to 40 arrests. The seizures so far: 114 kilograms of meth, 25 gallons of liquid meth, dozens of guns and a quarter-million dollars in cash.
But the most troubling part is the 12,000 fentanyl pills agents seized.
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“This fentanyl is poison. It's just poison. And that's what driving the deaths,” Murphy said.
Murphy said the fentanyl was pressed to look like the prescription painkiller Roxycodone.
“The evilness of trying to create something that looks like a real product, so it makes it more marketable with no sense of care for what it’s doing,” Murphy said.
Murphy said during his agents’ work, they got intelligence the cartel put a hit out on a woman living locally who owed it money and managed to stop the murder.
“This literally could have happened and our local agencies would have been trying to figure out what happened and probably never been able to solve it,” Murphy said.
The DEA said 15 of the 20 people they arrested Thursday were in the country illegally.
Of the 40 total arrests in the operation, approximately half of the suspects will face federal charges. The others will face state charges.