Sheriff’s office makes largest heroin bust in over a decade

Two men were arrested in Fort Morgan’s Walmart parking lot in northeast Colorado last week after being caught by undercover investigators with nearly 3 kilograms, or 6 pounds, of brown heroin.

The drugs have an estimated street value of $500,000, which could make it one of the largest heroin busts in Colorado in the last decade, according to the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office.

“This is not street delivery stuff. People who can deliver that quantity are not little fish in the sea,” Morgan County Sheriff Jim Crone said.

The two men arrested were Ricardo Urizabel-Lopez, 28, and Carlos Ruben Valenzuela-Navarro, 35, both from Hermosillo, Mexico. Along with an adult female and juvenile female, they delivered the heroin to an undercover investigator in the Walmart parking lot.

All four people were initially arrested, with the two females being released after officials determined that they had no involvement in the case. The two men were held in a separate county on felony charges of drug possession and distribution.

The operation required more than a dozen investigators from the Front Range Task Force, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office, as well as officers from both the Fort Morgan Police Department and Colorado State Patrol.