Image 1 / 2
An additional $401,880 in cash was found in the car that led officers to the drugs after it was stopped in Iredell County.
Alejandro Alvarran Alvardo, 36, of 4428 Wiles Road, Hamptonville is charged with trafficking cocaine, trafficking a meth-amphetamine and maintaining a drug dwelling. He is currently being held on $1 million dollars bond in the Yadkin County Jail.
Yadkinville Police Chief Tim Parks said events began Tuesday around 1 p.m. when Lt. Randy Dimmette of the Yadkinville Police noticed some unusual behavior from a driver.
"One of my officers saw a couple of vehicles while he was on patrol acting suspicious," Parks said Thursday. "They had out of state tags so he contacted our narcotics officer. The narcotics officer went out to investigate and all of that went on up until late that night."
Parks said as the investigation continued and as authorities observed what they describe as more unusual behavior, things started to fall into place. He said after an extensive investigation Iredell County Sheriff's deputies stopped the vehicle and found the money. "No one laid claim to the money," Parks said. "So then we also did a search warrant at a house in Hamptonville and that's where the 8 and a half kilos were found."
Yadkinville Police along with the Yadkin County Sheriff's Office and the SBI began the investigation, which would eventually bring in U.S. Customs, Wilkes, Davie, Forsyth and Iredell county authorities.
Maj. Danny Widener of the Yadkin County Sheriffs Office said bringing in the other departments was very important to making the arrest.
"The investigation was started by the SBI, the Yadkinville Police and the Yadkin Sheriff's Office who are all part of the Yadkin Valley Drug Task Force," he said. "As we were going into different districts we would call those agencies and of course we would want their assistance. That's the only way you can do it is to work together. Because unfortunately drug dealers don't stay in one place."
Parks also made special note about the different departments coming together.
"The big thing about that is it's multiple agencies working together for a common goal to get the bad guy off the street," he said. "A lot of times offices have difficulty working together, but this shows we can work together well."
Parks said this is the biggest drug bust Yadkinville has ever seen.
"We've been doing this drug interdiction for a little over a year now, and we've seized $63,000 one time and we've siezed $25,000," he said. "This is obviously off the scales compared to that. We probably get a few operations like that in a years time but never like this. I know it's the biggest that we've had, without question."
Widener said while it is not the biggest bust in the history of the sheriff's office, it is still a substantial amount.
"We've seized more drugs in the past than that, but we haven't seized the combination of both drugs and money in one investigation," he said.
Widener said the investigation is still ongoing and said he expects more arrests before it is over.
"We are trying to interview different people," he said. We've got some names form some people we interviewed before, so we are going to follow up on those. As the investigation continues, I feel fairly sure there will probably be other arrests made."
Alvardo appeared in court yesterday and will appear again in the next couple of weeks for a probable cause hearing.
"It's a good feeling when you can take that amount of drugs off the road," Widener said. " And even though we only made one arrest, thats a lot of drugs to take off the road at one time."
Post a Comment
