REVERE – Police made the largest cocaine bust in state history Monday night when they seized nearly 200 pounds of the drug with an estimated street value of $10 million.Gilberto Cruz Padilla, 24, and Rafael Jesus Montero, 22, were arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) and Massachusetts State Police as they unloaded the massive amount of drugs into a trailer around 8 p.m.Chelsea District Court Judge Dunbar Livingston ordered the suspects held on $5 million cash bail after they pleaded innocent during their arraignment. A probable cause hearing is scheduled for Jan. 11.”This was, to say the least, a monumental seizure of cocaine, the biggest one I’ve ever seen in my 25-year career in law enforcement,” said Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley. “This bust will have a tremendous impact on cocaine sales.”The heavy scent of the drug filled the air as prosecutors and law enforcement officials surveyed the bricks of cocaine displayed on a table.”Drug amounts of this magnitude destroy lives,” said Bruce Foucart, Special Agent in charge of I.C.E. investigations in Boston. “I’m sure residents can now sleep easier knowing that the cocaine will never make it to the streets.”According to court documents, police set up surveillance on the trailer with Texas license plates, which was parked on Railroad Avenue in Revere, where they saw Padilla removing kilograms of cocaine from underneath the trailer and Montero then placing them into a suitcase.Police swarmed in and arrested the pair as the suitcases were placed into the trunk of Montero’s vehicle.”We have snatched $10 million in cocaine away from the drug kingpins,” Conley said. “We will never know how many people would have overdosed from the drugs. It would have poisoned a lot of young people, no doubt.”Undercover officers met with Padilla on Monday afternoon to discuss the transportation fee of $50,000 for delivering the trailer and were given some of the money.Shortly after, the trailer was detached across from Mike’s shipping warehouse on Railroad Avenue and Padilla got to work with a crow bar and power tools to access the cocaine hidden underneath.Montero, a citizen of the Dominican Republic, gave police a license with a fake name on it when arrested.Conley said while Padilla and Cruz were charged with trafficking over 200 grams of cocaine, it reflects less than 1/400th the weight of the cocaine that was seized. If convicted, the charges carry a mandatory 15-year prison sentence.”We plan to prosecute these two individuals severely,” Conley said.
