Cocaine Seizure

Honduran naval and air forces, coordinating with the Prosecutor's Office, seized 1,661 kilograms of cocaine packed in 55 bundles off Gracias a Dios and arrested four Hondurans in a Friday operation in the Caribbean.

A judge ordered three men held pending trial on charges of transporting 1,234 kg of cocaine in a hidden-compartment tanker truck seized in El Progreso, Yoro on August 27; they also face weapons charges.

The Public Ministry's anti-drug directorate and the Armed Forces seized a bundle containing 20 packages of alleged cocaine on a Choluteca beach, recovered abandoned at the shoreline in a black-wrapped package typical of organized-crime maritime drug trafficking.

Olvin Javier Velásquez Maldonado, 40, was sentenced to more than four years in prison for conspiring to transport 24 kilograms of cocaine hidden in a boat traveling from Utila to Louisiana in 2022; his fingerprints on the drug packaging provided key evidence.

A court ordered Anyi Yariela Mejía Interiano, 28, to stand trial for aggravated drug trafficking after police seized 154 packages of suspected cocaine and $2,000 in cash from a vehicle she was driving in Namasigüe on June 29; her mother received provisional dismissal.

Michael Adolf Dixon Rivers, a Honduran drug trafficker who operated Caribbean shipping routes, was sentenced to 14 years in US federal prison in May 2022 after authorities intercepted approximately 3 metric tons of cocaine near Aruba in 2019, unraveling his international cocaine-smuggling conspiracy.