Chicago Tribune

Fifteen people with ties to a Mexican drug cartel have been indicted on charges of distributing thousands of pounds of cocaine and collecting millions of dollars in a major Chicago-area cocaine conspiracy, prosecutors announced Friday.

Those charged in the indictments were arrested in August as part of the government’s Operation Coronado, an effort launched in 2007 to break the grip of La Familia Michoacana on the U.S. cocaine market.

Drug Enforcement Agency officials have arrested more than 300 people in 19 states as part of the operation, prosecutors said.

In the Chicago area, 250 grams of cocaine and $8 million were seized in raids that mainly took place in Berwyn, Bolingbrook, Oak Lawn, Hickory Hills, Joliet and Justice.

Authorities allege Mexicans were hired to move to these locations and live in houses where drugs were stashed.

In one home in Joliet, law enforcement officials found $1.4 million and a large quantity of cocaine, but the man who lived there with his family was not believed part of the conspiracy.

All 15 Chicago-area defendants were charged with conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine in multi-kilogram quantities.

Among those charged were the two men identified as leaders of the distribution network in the Chicago area, Jorge Luis Torres-Galvan, 31, of Danforth, Ill, and Jose Gonzalez-Zavala, 37, of Joliet.