Over five months in 2023, state Department of Justice Special Agent Mark Wood said, he and other agents watched as 50-year-old Jurupa Valley resident Jose Raul Chica and 34-year-old Colton resident Jose Antonio Interiano Martinez steered truckload after truckload of contraband — 129 trips in all — to a business in Ontario.

Inside the box trucks, Wood said, were not illegal drugs whose seizures are celebrated by police departments or the kind of aerial, out-of-state fireworks that make fire chiefs tremble.

Instead, inside were everyday objects that, under most circumstances, are perfectly legal. Except in this case, Wood said in a sworn statement written to obtain arrest warrants, these were millions of aluminum cans and plastic bottles destined for the unaffiliated Ontario recycling proc

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