AURORA | An Aurora man was sentenced to eight years in federal prison in U.S. District Court yesterday for stashing pounds of cocaine and methamphetamine at his Aurora grocery store as part of an international drug trafficking operation.
At a March 5 hearing in Denver, U.S. District Court Judge Raymond Moore sentenced Jose Tapia-Rubio, 60, to eight years in federal prison followed by five years supervised release for conspiracy to possess and sell illegal substances.
Tapia-Rubio pleaded guilty last summer to two of the 57 charges filed against him, according to court documents.
Tapia-Rubio was one of 17 defendants named in an indictment filed in 2017 that outlined the charges levied against the members of the drug-trafficking organization. Of the eight individuals sentenced so far, Tapia-Rubio received the second-harshest sentence.
The nine other people named in the document are still awaiting sentencing.
Law enforcement officials seized more than a pound of methamphetamine, 12.5 kilograms of cocaine, 11 firearms and about $700,000 in cash from drug sales during their investigation, according to a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The investigation was a collaboration between DEA agents, the IRS, the Aurora Police Department, and local U.S. Attorneys. Officials used confidential sources, wiretaps, physical surveillance and controlled narcotics purchases throughout their investigation, according to court documents.
Law enforcement investigators found the drug organization was trafficking cocaine and methamphetamine from Mexico into California and then to Colorado.
A trio of women also named in the original indictment reportedly used hidden compartments to drive cocaine from the Northridge, California area to Colorado.
Investigators used GPS phone monitoring to locate one of the women while she was driving a GMC Terrain filled with cocaine on a Utah highway in November 2016. Upon pulling the woman over, officials found about 17 pounds of cocaine in packages labelled either “primo” or “verde,” according to court documents.
Tapia-Rubio, who also used the nickname “Don Chaquetas,” was the head of the drug trafficking organization, according to court documents. The Aurora man owned El Rancho Market, a grocery store near the intersection of South Chambers Road and East Mississippi Avenue. There, he and others loaded and stored drugs that were eventually sold and processed across Aurora and the Denver metro area. The narcotics were distributed as far Aspen, Breckenridge and New Castle, according to prosecutors.
Tapia-Rubio also used a home on East Arizona Avenue in central Aurora to store, off-load and sell drugs, according to court documents. Another home on South Pagosa Ciricle near Quincy Reservoir in southeast Aurora served as a stash house for Tapia-Rubio’s organization.
“Targeting drug traffickers and focusing on the top of their organizations is an important role for the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” U.S. Attorney Jason Dunn said in a statement. “Thanks go to the agents from the DEA, IRS CI and the Aurora Police Department who worked tirelessly on this case.”