Three Duluth Men Charged With Drug Trafficking

Five men, including three with Duluth addresses, have been charged with drug trafficking as the result of the seizure of 1,572 pounds of marijuana on a tractor-trailer, the Gainesville Times reported online Tuesday (April 24). Estimated street value of the marijuana is more than $3 million.

Hall County Sheriff’s Lt. Scott Ware, commander of the Gainesville-Hall County Multi-Agency Narcotics Squad, called the seizure “our largest marijuana bust in probably 10 years” during a press conference Tuesday morning at the Gainesville Justice Center.

Arrested and charged with trafficking marijuana and possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute were Jose Luis Chavez-Morfin, 43, of Duluth; Juventino Morfin-Mendoza, 38, of Duluth; Jose Macias-Sanchez, 45, of Duluth; Marcos Antonio Ortiz-Barajas, 19, Douglasville; and Calvin Elwood Gearhart, 47, of Wichita, Kan. They were being held at the Hall County Jail.

Immigration holds were placed on Chavez-Morfin, Morfin-Mendoza, Macias-Sanchez and Ortiz-Barajas.

The five men were arrested April 12 as the result of an investigation based on information developed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a part of the Department of Homeland Security.

A tractor-trailer containing 106 packets of marijuana was intercepted as it arrived at a business in the 1700 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard along with several other vehicles that were intended to unload the truck’s contents for distribution, according to Ware.

The truckload of marijuana apparently came out of Kansas via Mexico, Ware said.