⏱ 3 min read
A brazen cocaine trafficking operation was busted on I-35 near Abbott, Texas, on July 16, 2023. That’s when a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper pulled over Jose Antonio Gabaldon-Salas, a 30-year-old Mexican national with a deadly cargo.
According to court documents, the trooper’s K-9 sniffed out three colored plastic bags containing eight bundles of rubber-banded cash and a half-brick of cocaine in the rear of Gabaldon-Salas’s vehicle. Two more bundles of cash were found in a black backpack on the passenger seat.
The cocaine, weighing 520.24 grams, was valued at over $10,000. The cash, totaling $77,380, was likely proceeds from Gabaldon-Salas’s lucrative operation.
Gabaldon-Salas, who worked for a drug trafficking organization (DTO) since October 2022, admitted to transporting between six and 12 kilograms of cocaine per month. He claimed to have been promoted from a money counter to a driver and was tasked with trafficking cocaine to Dallas and returning bulk cash to the border area.
Gabaldon-Salas’s arrest was just the tip of the iceberg. A search of his Austin apartment, where he resided with a co-conspirator and the co-conspirator’s girlfriend, uncovered another $58,695 in cash believed to be proceeds from narcotics trafficking.
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📋 Key Facts
- Crime: Drug Trafficking
- Defendant: Texas
- Location: TX
- Source: DOJ Press Release
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