skeleton dogsMalnourished cows and ancient olive trees coexisted for a few days with the tumult of cars, barrels, gasoline, acetone and cardboard transported by drug traffickers to a farm in La Puebla de Montalbán (Toledo) where all the machines were working to extract and cook cocaine under the lines of a bullring. The story of the bullfighting drug laboratory began a few years ago, as almost always, in a remote region of Colombia.
“I have been ruined several times and I want to move forward.” This is the explanation that the owner of the place gave to the police when the officers handcuffed him. He also told them that his son wanted to become a bullfighter and that with the ruin he had on him, it was difficult for the boy to succeed. With these wickers, he gave his soul to the highest bidder: Colombian drug traffickers who found in the silent fields of La Puebla de Montalbán the ideal refuge for their business. This laboratory was going to be the flagship through which they would pass hundreds of kilos of cocaine until the police found it and took it down.
They felt so safe that when Udyco Central agents broke into the farm, one of them asked them: “What are you coming for the dogs?” “It’s a crime… like they did here.” Narcos, but worried about the animals that weren’t theirs and were in horrible conditions. The first thing the police did was notify the Civil Guard so that they could send Seprona. This was not the first time that the owner had problems with the Armed Institute regarding the condition of the animals (dogs and cows in particular).
The beginning of Operation Alcázar took place just two years ago, in August 2022, when the police received information from the Spanish liaison officer in Colombia. You suspect that a container that is going to arrive at the port of Malaga is contaminated, that is, transports cocaine. There are two companies (the importer and the exporter) involved, linked to the fruit trade. Customs also have this information. The control to which the merchandise is subjected is negative. “We did not know what technique they were using,” the researchers now admit. The investigations then focus on a Colombian couple, apparently owners of the company that imports the bananas. They do not work, but they manage money and have appointments that drug specialists know only too well. The investigation is underway in Malaga.
Former ‘Witcher’ Bully and His Parents
One of these secret meetings takes place in Madrid, controlled by the agents. The couple finds Jasona fellow Colombian who will be the thread they will pull to uncover the complex plot.
Jason is the eldest son and lieutenant of Harold Wilson Upegui Ospina, aka “the witcher”Former Colombian hitman, head of a “collection office”, who for years sold his extortion and thug services to drug cartels based in our country. He and his brother Cesar Augusto were arrested in 2013 by agents of the Organized Crime Brigade for money laundering, extortion and criminal organization. They possessed weapons and evidence was found of their payments to poorly paid drug traffickers.
In theory, after a brief period in prison, they were released and both were still in our country. “The Witcher” had converted his collection and hitman office in a powerful organization for the introduction and distribution of cocaine in Spain. And this, despite being claimed by Colombia for a voluntary homicide committed in 2008.
It was not known that the former hitman led a discreet life of mafia boss halfway between Toledo and Madrid, because he was using false documents with another name and his fingerprints did not appear. In his current life, his name was Frey Arboreda Londoño and, under this name, he had a residence permit, contracts, car insurance and all kinds of documents.
It was not easy to know that Harold Upegui and Frey Arboreda were the same person until, during one of the wiretaps, Jason, his eldest son, He spoke freely with “daddy”These conversations, added to the surveillance already authorized by a court in Torrijos (Toledo), focused on the head of the clan.
The whole family, settled between Madrid and Toledo, lived from their business. They had safe apartments, a refuge cabin where they organized birthdays and parties and sheltered other members of the organization who had arrived from Colombia, cars and a large group of people at their disposal. The hierarchy and secrecy worked like clockwork. No arguments or escapes. Children, cousins, girlfriends, wives…united for the cause of coca and the good life.
Not a cheesy book
“They had a very familiar standard of living“They went on holiday together, they weren’t ostentatious or old-fashioned like we are used to, but they ate out every day, for example, and that costs money,” explains the inspector of the Udyco central police, in charge of the operation.
“The Witcher”at the head of the organization, gave orders to his two sons, his brother and his nephews, one of whom had arrived from Colombia shortly before, and they were all the ones who instructed the others, who were more exposed: those responsible for transporting the narcotics and the money obtained from the sale.
After months of investigation and circumvention of the drug traffickers’ security measures, they arrive at the laboratory, the star of the group, the “flagship product”, installed as they said in a very large rural property in La Puebla de Montalbán. In the bullring that houses it, under the lines, the drug traffickers have installed the laboratory divided into several areas and prepared to produce enormous quantities of drugs. The objective was to have a continuous path of cocaine production in our country similar to the large Colombian “kitchens” for which they had built their own “recycler”.
The “kitchen” was ready but without goods; They made visits and tests and waited. The main thing was missing, the arrival of the medicine, which the agents had been waiting impatiently for months.
At the same time, the Malaga investigation, temporarily archived, is reopened. The customs surveillance receives information (already this year) that a new container of fruit is going to arrive in Malaga. This was the decisive moment. The cargo – a full container – He brought 24,000 kilos of bananasdistributed in 1,080 boxes: contaminated cardboard, impregnated with cocaine, which had been forgotten during the previous shipment.
Bananas in Mercamadrid
The Malaga-based branch rented an industrial warehouse in a nearby town where a team of compatriots, hired for the job, transferred the 24 tons of bananas into new cardboard boxes. It took three daysThey only ate sandwiches and spent the night at a nearby farm until the order was completed. Bananas leaving for Mercamadrid and containers from Colombia were transported to a warehouse in Leganés surrounded by security.
“We saw how the people of Toledo bought paper shredders, the precursors, how they recovered the ‘cook’,” the researchers explain. It was the moment of truth. Two chemists and an experienced cook arrived from Colombia to extract the substance impregnated with cardboard and later “cook” it. They removed 50 kilos of drugs in just two days, an outrage that gives an idea of the level of the group. Udyco, supported by GEO, attacks the laboratory where they had already packaged the medicine in blocks or “bricks” of a kilo. “There were many people from the organization who were doing counter-surveillance. The son and a cousin were going to take 21 kilos in a car and all the others were posted along the road,” says the inspector. That day, there were 18 detainees, including 11 members of their family. Ten other arrests took place later.
The businessman who transferred the property to them confessed to the police that I was broke and that the money collected was intended to help his son to do bullfighting, even though the boy was not aware of his father’s scam. They found two packages of 10,000 euros each, vacuum-packed, just like those of the drug traffickers (more than 240,000 euros seized). They are all a family, united in crime and silence.
