Lovers quarrel led to coke bust

Phone conversations via wiretap led officials to alleged supplier

Juan Carlos Cruz Paz arrived home one morning, realized his girlfriend had moved out, and that along with the furniture, she’d taken his two kilogram stash of cocaine.

That lovers quarrel, chronicled in a federal criminal complaint, kicked off a comedy of errors that ends with the arrest of both Cruz Paz and Yasiel Maragoto, his alleged cocaine supplier, on federal narcotics trafficking charges.

And even if the complaint doesn’t name the ex of Cruz Paz, or indicate if she’s in any legal trouble, it does make clear that law enforcement officials were listening in to the jilted dealer’s phone conversations via wiretap from the top of the first act.

“She took some sixty thousand dollars from me,” Cruz Paz complained to an associate named only as A.M. over the telephone at about 10:30 in the morning on the day he discovered his girlfriend had left with the furniture and with the drugs. “The old woman took everything, brother.”

The complaint makes clear that he was referencing the street value of the cocaine his ex had allegedly taken.

Cruz Paz told A.M. that he’d been out all night distributing cocaine. He’d left with three kilograms and had come back with just one. But upon arriving home he’d discovered that the house he shared with his lover was empty.

In the safe where he hid his drugs she’d left a note: “She says that she knows everything, what I do for a living, all that I deal with.”

“I blame myself,” Cruz Paz bemoaned. “I’m too naive!”

His friend counseled patience. If Cruz Paz leaned on his ex girlfriend too hard, she could turn him over to the cops. The only option was to call the supplier who had loaned him the coke and beg for forgiveness.

“I have to pay these people,” he told A.M., in apparent agreement, “and that’s it.”

Based on that recorded conversation and subsequent surveillance of Cruz Paz, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office obtained a warrant from a U.S. magistrate judge to track his

vehicle.

Eventually, that tracking device led them to the Miami Lakes home of Yasiel Maragoto.

After two months of surveillance during which Cruz Paz allegedly made repeated trips back to his suspected supplier, agents chose Valentines day as the date to make their move on the lovelorn dealer.

Cruz Paz was pulled over on Feb. 14, 2019, as he was returning to West Palm from Miami Lakes. Inside his vehicle, the criminal affidavit alleges, officers found 72 grams of Cocaine.

Cruz Paz immediately offered to cooperate with investigators, the complaint explains. He told investigators that he had been distributing cocaine for Maragoto because he owed Maragoto a $50,000 debt, but that he’d already moved some 15 to 20 kilograms for Maragoto in past year, before becoming indebted to him.

Officials used the information given them by Cruz Paz to set up surveillance on Maragoto. On Feb. 18, they executed a search warrant on his Miami Lakes home, allegedly finding over 7 kilograms of cocaine hidden inside a large package of baby wipes in the back of a car belonging to Maragoto’s wife.

Maragoto appeared today at a detention hearing in West Palm Beach. A citizen of Cuba, he was ordered held without bond until trial. Cruz Paz, also a citizen of Cuba, is scheduled for a detention hearing on Wednesday in the same court house.

If convicted, both individuals face a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison with a five year mandatory minimum sentence.

Attorneys for Maragoto and Cruz Paz declined to comment.