KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Tom Larson, Acting United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a San Bernardino, Calif., woman was charged in federal court today after eight pounds of fentanyl were found in her luggage at a local bus station.
Esmeralda Castro, 18, of San Bernardino, was charged in a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Mo., with possessing fentanyl with the intent to distribute.
According to an affidavit filed in support of the federal criminal complaint, a K-9 sniffing luggage at a Kansas City, Mo., bus station on Monday, May 8, 12017, detected narcotics in a large, grey, hard-sided suitcase. The suitcase had a baggage claim ticket with Castro’s name on it, indicating it was being transported to New York, N.Y. A Kansas City police detective located Castro in the bus station and she agreed to let him search her luggage.
Castro told the detective that she had two bags – the hard-sided suitcase in the luggage compartment under the bus and a black-colored rolling bag in the passenger compartment. The hard-sided suitcase in the luggage compartment contained several clear heat-sealed food saver bags with marijuana, methamphetamine, a large glass marijuana pipe and a pink marijuana pipe. The rolling bag had a false compartment sewn into the bottom of the liner. When a police detective told Castro he was going to have the K-9 conduct a check of the bag, she ran out the back doors of the luggage area, but was apprehended and arrested. Inside the rolling bag, detectives found three large bundles wrapped in black carbon paper. The bundles, which weighed approximately eight pounds, contained fentanyl.
Castro told investigators she was carrying the bag to New York for her boyfriend, and was supposed to meet someone there and then return with $1,500 to deliver to her boyfriend.
Larson cautioned that the charge contained in this complaint is simply an accusation, and not evidence of guilt.
This case is being prosecuted by Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Courtney Pratten. It was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Kansas City, Mo., Police Department.