Drug Kingpin Draws Life in Prison : Smuggling: Anaheim narcotics unit credited in conviction of Colombian operating Southland’s second-largest ring.

LOS ANGELES â€”  A drug dealer who operated the Southland’s second-largest interstate cocaine trucking network out of a Rancho Cucamonga warehouse has been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, federal officials announced Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Laughlin E. Waters said the magnitude of the crime warranted the harshest sentence possible for Roberto Nicolas Castro, 39, a Colombian national convicted of masterminding the distribution across the United States of more than 1 1/2 tons of cocaine valued at $141 million.

“Even though Mr. Castro does have some good qualities. . . , what he did to other members of society in the careless and reckless disregard (for) the damage that might be imposed on others is an offense of almost monumental nature,� Waters said in passing sentence Monday afternoon in a Los Angeles federal courtroom.

Prosecutors said credit for Castro’s conviction goes to the Anaheim Police Department’s narcotics team for the surveillance work that led to the breakup of a cross-country cocaine trafficking ring in five separate seizures over nearly a year.

“The men under Sgt. (Steve) Rodig are very, very professional,� Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael W. Fitzgerald said of the Anaheim team, which has broken up several cocaine smuggling rings in recent years. “They are willing to put in the hours necessary to do this kind of sophisticated surveillance.�

Castro was one of 12 people indicted last August in connection with the cocaine ring. He was convicted Feb. 28 of one count of conspiracy to distribute 1,527 kilograms (3,359 pounds) of cocaine and four counts of distributing the drug.

A second defendant, Juan Carlos Madiedo, 27, of Gardena has been sentenced to nearly 13 years for one count of possession of cocaine for distribution. A third defendant, Spencer Edward Alvarez, 42, of Tampa, Fla., faces trial June 17 before Judge Waters. A fourth defendant has been prosecuted by the state of Nevada, Fitzgerald said, and a fifth man arrested in Puerto Rico managed to escape. The remaining seven have never been captured.

Castro first came to the attention of Anaheim narcotics officers in 1989, Fitzgerald said. Officers eventually traced the Temecula man to a large warehouse he had leased in the San Bernardino County community of Rancho Cucamonga, believed to be the central clearing house for cocaine imported through Mexico and bound for distribution in New York and the Northeastern United States.

Officers watched Castro pick up smaller amounts of cocaine from so-called “stash houses,� which Fitzgerald described as “Leave It to Beaver�-type homes in Rialto and elsewhere. At the warehouse, large shipments of cocaine would be loaded onto trucks for interstate transfer, mainly to Newark, N.J. Some of the shipments were packed in simple cardboard containers, while others were hidden in special compartments in the tractor-trailer rigs, the prosecutor said.

From September through November of 1989, Anaheim police, working with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies from Fullerton, Brea and San Bernardino County, intercepted five separate shipments of at least 90% pure cocaine after the shipments had left Rancho Cucamonga.

Castro was not arrested until last Aug. 3 because Anaheim detectives wanted to continue their surveillance, Fitzgerald said.

Information developed in that investigation led police agencies to a separate case and the seizure of 2 1/2 tons of cocaine in Baldwin Park in late 1989, the second largest in California history.