Narcotics

A federal grand jury indicted six Colombian nationals for operating a narco-submarine fleet to bring 5,000 kilograms of cocaine to the U.S. The crew is being held in Colombia.

The handcrafted vessels are usually not true submarines. Part of the vehicle sticks out of the water. But they are camouflaged to avoid naval patrols and have become a significant force in the international drug trade, delivering potentially tens of millions of dollars of cocaine per vessel.

Authorities in Colombia put the crew’s days on the high seas to a halt when they arrested them on Wednesday. The men are expected to be extradited to New York City.

“With today’s arrests, the defendants’ conspiracy has been torpedoed,” said John J. Durham, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “The United States will not tolerate the export and distribution of dangerous drugs into our homeland. My Office is determined to prosecute these defendants in a federal courtroom in Brooklyn where they will be held accountable for their crimes.”

The men moved drugs aboard the vessels from Colombia to Central America and parts of Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel, federal authorities said. In 2023, they were caught twice “within the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the United States” carrying thousands of kilos of cocaine aboard subs bound for the U.S., according to the indictment.

Crew members are: Elkin Armando Alomia Quinones, 39; Diego Luis Obregon Aguirre, 46; Edwin Obregon Castro, 40; Juan Matias Obregon Castro, 48; Rodrigo Obregon Saavedra, 68; and Narjel Paredes, 55. They face up to life in prison if they are convicted.

“Their ill-intended ingenuity knows no bounds,” said Michael Alfonso, the acting special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in New York. But, “the unified strength and versatility of the U.S. federal law enforcement system has once again stopped a dangerous, allegedly cartel-aligned drug trafficking organization in its tracks.”

Authorities around the world participated in the investigation. Drug Enforcement Administration teams in New York, Bogota, Puerto Rico and Madrid were involved as was the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Puerto Rico and the Cuerpo Técnico de Investigación, an FBI-like agency in Colombia.



Colombian authorities are holding a crew of drug traffickers that a federal grand jury in New York charged with using a fleet of submarines to ferry over 5,000 kilograms of cocaine to the U.S., federal officials announced Thursday.

The six-man crew — all Colombians between the ages of 39 and 68 — are the latest to be indicted for using what are often called narco-submarines.

The handcrafted vessels are usually not true submarines. Part of the vehicle sticks out of the water. But they are camouflaged to avoid naval patrols and have become a significant force in the international drug trade, delivering potentially tens of millions of dollars of cocaine per vessel.

Authorities in Colombia put the crew’s days on the high seas to a halt when they arrested them on Wednesday. The men are expected to be extradited to New York City.

“With today’s arrests, the defendants’ conspiracy has been torpedoed,” said John J. Durham, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “The United States will not tolerate the export and distribution of dangerous drugs into our homeland. My Office is determined to prosecute these defendants in a federal courtroom in Brooklyn where they will be held accountable for their crimes.”

The men moved drugs aboard the vessels from Colombia to Central America and parts of Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel, federal authorities said. In 2023, they were caught twice “within the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the United States” carrying thousands of kilos of cocaine aboard subs bound for the U.S., according to the indictment.

Crew members are: Elkin Armando Alomia Quinones, 39; Diego Luis Obregon Aguirre, 46; Edwin Obregon Castro, 40; Juan Matias Obregon Castro, 48; Rodrigo Obregon Saavedra, 68; and Narjel Paredes, 55. They face up to life in prison if they are convicted.

“Their ill-intended ingenuity knows no bounds,” said Michael Alfonso, the acting special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in New York. But, “the unified strength and versatility of the U.S. federal law enforcement system has once again stopped a dangerous, allegedly cartel-aligned drug trafficking organization in its tracks.”

Authorities around the world participated in the investigation. Drug Enforcement Administration teams in New York, Bogota, Puerto Rico and Madrid were involved as was the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Puerto Rico and the Cuerpo Técnico de Investigación, an FBI-like agency in Colombia.

More: 

Where do the narco-submarines come from?

Smugglers have used camelines to move drugs dating back to moonshine submarines on the Mississippi during Prohibition.

Drug traffickers are suspected of adopting narco-submarines as early as the 1980s when U.S. authorities cracked down on the powerboats and low-flying aircraft used to bring in drugs then.

By 2009, law enforcement authorities said over a third of the drugs smuggled into the U.S. came aboard the submersibles, according to the .

Narco-submarine technology continues to improve and now the biggest players can carry over a dozen tons of cocaine worth tens of millions of dollars aboard a vessel. Some even go all the way to Europe.

The vessels are typically handcrafted from fiberglass and painted in ocean colors to avoid detection. They are hermetically sealed, contain diesel or electric engines, and are either self-propelled or carry people who help ensure the drugs get to their destinations.

Mario Pazmiño, former chief of intelligence at the Ecuador Army and a security analyst, previously told the  that "they have two important characteristics: “Their profiled displacement on the coast makes them much less detectable due to their appearance,” and large volumes of drugs “can be loaded and transported quickly."

For years, they have allowed producers in Colombia and Ecuador to expand their business with the biggest distributors in Mexico, including the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

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