Multiple people were arrested Friday after being named in a federal indictment alleging conspiracy in a ring that involved smuggling controlled substances, including fentanyl, into the Riverside County correctional system.
“Drug smuggling endangers the lives of inmates and the deputies who are sworn to guard them.”
The alleged ringleader was identified as 46-year-old Andrew Jesus Ayala of Riverside, affiliated with a street gang. He was taken into custody Friday, along with two others. He was coordinated with “three in-custody defendants who wanted to obtain narcotics, a group of facilitators on the street and an at least one drug mule who concealed narcotics in a body cavity,” the government said in a statement.
The conversations indicating plans to smuggle narcotics into one of the county’s five detention facilities. “Alleged conspirators “arranged temporary housing for the drug mules before and after they went into custody and delivered narcotics,” the agency stated.
“In one incident in late 2022, a defendant attempted to smuggle one and three-quarters ounces of methamphetamine concealed inside his body, but that shipment was intercepted when the contraband was seen on an X-ray machine as the defendant was brought into custody.”
Fentanyl intended for distribution inside the jail was expected to net 10 times its street value, prosecutors said.
Background information on the defendants was unavailable.