One-ton cocaine bust reveals secret US-Mexico tunnel

Key points

• Federal prosecutors have charged four suspects with trafficking more than one ton of cocaine for the Jalisco New Generation cartel using a fake retail store in San Diego as a front for a sophisticated tunnel that ran across the border to Tijuana, Mexico.
• The defendants include two Mexican nationals and two Americans charged with conspiring to traffic drugs across the US-Mexico border.
• The suspects, who range in age from 18 to 32, all face sentences that could put them in prison for life.
• One of them, Gregorio Epifanio Hernandez Lopez, also faces the charge of “constructing, financing or using unauthorized tunnels”.
• Agents from Homeland Security Investigations, the investigation division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, first began surveilling a San Diego shop called “Buy 4 Less” located near the Otay Mesa border crossing in December of last year, according to a federal criminal complaint filed Monday.