LOS ANGELES (KTLA) — Five people were arrested Tuesday in connection with a sprawling cross-country drug trafficking organization that funneled some 22 tons of cocaine and over $100 million in cash between Los Angeles and New York, officials with the U.S. Department of Justice announced.
Prosecutors said in a news release that the organizations’ alleged ringleaders, 45-year-old David Rodriguez, aka “Gotti” and “Fat Boy,” of Dumont, New Jersey, and 39-year-old Raymond O’Connell, aka “Sal” and “White Boy,” of Manhattan, have been in custody since 2024.
The two men are accused of purchasing and shipping bulk quantities of cocaine stored at an office fronting as a jewelry store in the California Jewelry Mart in downtown L.A.
Cocaine was reportedly shipped in locked plastic cases concealed i