The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Louisville Division announced its interruption of a guns-for-drugs trafficking scheme stretching from Louisville to the Mexican state of Jalisco.
Nearly 60 guns—shotguns, submachine guns, handguns and assault rifles—were seized from an organized group that called the city its homebase.
As part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) seized 62 kilograms of cocaine and $700,000 cash according to Special Agent in Charge Jim Scott.
This group, Scott explained, brought guns to Mexico in “trap vehicles” with false compartments. Then he said they were loaded up with cocaine before heading back to Kentucky.
Special agent in charge, John Nokes, said while Louisville is believed to be the homebase for this criminal organization, investigators believe they were responsible for narcotics and firearm trafficking in at least five states.
Investigators said straw purchases, where one person legally buys a gun then illegally gives it away, were how most of the guns were obtained.
The first set of guns were seized when the Louisville Metro Police Department investigated a shooting in the Jacobs neighborhood in February 2024. Nobody died, but five men were ultimately arrested for several drugs and the possession of 43 weapons, four of them stolen, at the house where the shooting took place. The ATF added that some of these seized guns were used in other shootings in Louisville.
Louisville Metro Police Department is a member of the task force.
The Internal Revenue Service criminal division calculated $34.7 million in the criminal operation’s laundered funds, according to Assistant Special Agent in Charge Kyle Brice. Jeffersontown police surveilled Mexican grocery stores around the city for the investigation.
He said detectives were doing a lot of work with the IRS and identifying those locations where money was being laundered and sent back to Mexico.
This task force’s investigation traced the group back to a leader in the Mexican state of Jalisco, and the task force said the Louisville group supplied weapons to the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
ATF Special Agent Nokes promised more indictments past the 14 handed out during this investigation.
Source: WHAS11
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