Pubdate: Sat, 22 Jun 2013
Source: Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)
Copyright: 2013 The Oregonian
Contact:  http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/324
Author: Les Zaitz
Series: Under the curse of cartels - An Oregonian Special Report

THE DEALER NEXT DOOR

T.J. wasn't eager to tell his story.

He spent six years as a lieutenant of Jorge Ortiz Oliva, a 
cartel-connected trafficker who ran a national-level meth, cocaine 
and marijuana empire from Salem.

T.J. knows talking to The Oregonian could get him hurt or killed. His 
attorney urged him to stay quiet, and law enforcement officials 
agreed that he could be putting himself in danger.

But after thinking it over for months, T.J. decided he wanted to 
share his tale -- to atone for what he did and to leave an account 
for his children to read one day. He asked not to be identified in 
any way. Even his initials have been changed. He also agreed to meet 
only behind closed curtains at his apartment, and only when his wife 
and children weren't home.

In three long interviews, T.J. offered a rare insider's look into 
Oregon's strange and brutal drug underworld. He described walking 
into a meth-cooking operation near downtown Salem, fans pumping a 
chemical fog into the street. He told of "counting parties" where 
people bundled piles of cash. He recalled picking up marijuana on the 
way home from a family trip to Disneyland, stuffing the pot in a 
rooftop carrier and crowding the luggage into the car with his kids.

He answered every question directly and with details. Government 
records and federal officials verify his account.

Speaking at his small, tidy apartment, the air perfumed by plug-in 
air fresheners, T.J. said he's out of the drug business and knows how 
outrageous his lifestyle once was.

Now, he said, "I'm worlds apart from that person."

Partying with 'Jet' set

For T.J., life in the drug-dealing big leagues started with Jet Skis.

He was a commercial power washer who had served time for drugs when 
he came across a party one summer weekend in 2001. Men and their 
dates were gathered around food and beer spread across the ground at 
Salem's popular Wallace Marine Park. Men sprinted across the 
Willamette River on Jet Skis.

T.J., drawn to anything fast and flashy, paused to look as he walked 
past. Ortiz Oliva, the party host, knew of T.J. through a friend and 
waved him over to join in.

As the afternoon wore on, T.J. and Ortiz Oliva, then 31, struck up a 
conversation about T.J.'s experience fixing used cars. Ortiz Oliva 
suggested they open an auto-body shop together.

"I just saw dollar signs," T.J. recalled.

With Ortiz Oliva's cash, the new partners leased warehouse space a 
few blocks northeast of downtown Salem. They bought equipment and 
brought in 15 cars to fix and sell.

But T.J. soon discovered Ortiz Oliva wasn't interested in dings and 
dents. The Mexico native had been dealing drugs in Salem since the 
early 1990s, interrupted by a two-year stint at the federal Big 
Spring Correctional Institution in Texas for selling meth. He was 
deported after his release but returned to Oregon and quickly resumed 
drug dealing.

T.J. didn't object. He overheard Ortiz Oliva on the phone one day 
offering to pay an underling $2,000 to fetch a car in California. "I 
stepped in and said, 'I want to do it.'"

Ortiz Oliva sent T.J. to central California in a Honda Accord and 
told him to check into a motel room and wait. A man showed up, 
wordlessly took the car keys, and returned two hours later. T.J. 
drove the car back to Salem and collected his cash. Ortiz Oliva told 
him chemicals needed to make meth had been concealed in the Honda.

More trips followed. T.J. estimated he went to California more than 
100 times, bringing back marijuana, chemicals and cocaine.

A sea of green As the enterprise grew, so did T.J.'s duties.

Ortiz Oliva asked him to figure out how to move marijuana and cocaine 
to dealers in Ohio and Minnesota. T.J. devised a scheme to tow show 
cars, such as a 1964 Chevy Impala and a custom 1980s Chevy pickup, 
with a Hummer H2 as if headed to an auction or sale. To back up the 
illusion, he slapped a business sign on the pickup and posted an ad on eBay.

Drugs were hidden in car trunks or under a pickup bed with a false 
bottom. Ortiz Oliva paid T.J. up to $6,000 a trip.

T.J. also made money on his own reselling Ortiz Oliva's drugs. He 
collected as much as $250,000 a month from a Portland marijuana 
dealer who ordered 100 pounds or more at a time.

As Ortiz Oliva added customers in Rhode Island, Florida, Texas and 
elsewhere, T.J. also had to process loads of cash. He would gather 
friends and relatives for counting parties to band mountains of 
bills, paying the helpers $1,000 each for maybe an hour's work. They 
once spent two hours counting $900,000.

Raised in a large American family with little money, T.J. reveled in 
his new wealth. He routinely dropped $2,000 a night at the Stars 
Cabaret strip club in Salem, buying rounds and lap dances, and 
flashing cash to attract women.

"I felt naked if I didn't have $5,000 in my pockets," he said. He 
bought himself a jet boat, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, all-terrain 
vehicles and the biggest pickup he could find.

The traffickers felt invincible, he said, leading to unnecessary risks.

Ortiz Oliva used the auto-body shop one weekend to cook meth. T.J. 
swung by to get paperwork and felt his throat burn as he stood in the 
office. He opened the door to the work bays and stepped into a dense 
white haze.

"Three guys literally come walking out of the fog," T.J. said. "You 
couldn't see 6 inches. One guy had a mask on. Two others had guns 
over their shoulders. They said they would be done pretty soon."

The men were using auto-painting fans to vent meth fumes into the 
street. T.J., alarmed by the recklessness of cooking meth so close to 
downtown, stepped into the parking lot and angrily jabbed Ortiz 
Oliva's number into his cellphone. Ortiz Oliva promised it wouldn't 
happen again.

Later, Ortiz Oliva asked to use T.J.'s rural home to cook meth. T.J. 
took $3,000 from Ortiz Oliva and drove his family to Disneyland.

"I thought I was the best dad in the world," he said.

On the way home, he picked up the load of pot -- 150 pounds' worth -- 
and forced his kids to ride the rest of the way crammed in the car 
with the family luggage.

Loose cannons Life wasn't all easy money.

Asked if Ortiz Oliva ever threatened associates to keep quiet, T.J. 
reacted with surprise. "He didn't need to," he said. "It's common 
sense. I didn't need anyone to tell me. I knew if I started talking 
something bad would happen."

On New Year's Eve 2005, Ortiz Oliva threw a party at his ranch-style 
home in east Salem, hiring a mariachi band to play in the garage. 
Ortiz Oliva, who had two girlfriends and children with each, bounced 
an infant son on one knee as a handful of men streamed out a side door.

One was a man nicknamed Nacho who had a reputation for killing people 
in Mexico, including a neighbor who refused to turn down his music. 
Nacho walked up to T.J. and accused him of stealing a pickup. The men 
- -- T.J. flanked by two friends, Nacho by three -- faced off.

Nacho pulled out a pistol and threatened to shoot T.J. One of T.J.'s 
friends jutted his hand out, bullets cradled in his palm. He dared 
Nacho to try. As Nacho reached forward, T.J.'s friends pulled back 
their jackets to reveal semi-automatic weapons. Nacho left.

The next day, Nacho showed up at T.J.'s auto-body shop with two black 
eyes and an apology. T.J. assumed Ortiz Oliva had ordered someone to beat him.

The net closes

Soon things began to unravel.

A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration task force had zeroed in on 
Ortiz Oliva, ultimately found to be one of the biggest drug kingpins 
in state history. Ortiz Oliva, with ties to a cartel in Nocupetaro, 
Mexico, trafficked cocaine and ran meth superlabs in Marion County 
and marijuana plantations in Oregon and elsewhere.

Agents eavesdropped for months on calls by T.J. and others.

In September 2006, agents intercepted a Honda Accord near Ashland and 
found $364,975 in a secret compartment above the gas tank. A month 
later, they stopped a courier near Cottage Grove, finding $94,750 in 
a gift bag in the trunk and $194,000 in the passenger air bag cavity.

Just before Thanksgiving, T.J. and four friends were hauling cash to 
Ortiz Oliva in California when they were stopped just south of Salem. 
The officer greeted T.J. by name and asked if he had cash in the car.

T.J., puzzled how the officer knew his identity, joked that he wished 
he did. Police went on to seize $179,160 hidden in a door panel and 
an armrest but made no arrests.

Despite losing more than $800,000 in a matter of weeks, Ortiz Oliva 
considered the incidents no more than bad luck.

"We couldn't be touched," T.J. said.

Then T.J.'s son was caught in 2007 with marijuana at high school. The 
teen had helped himself to 2 pounds stashed and forgotten in the 
family's motor home, plus $30,000 swiped from $130,000 T.J. kept in a 
box under the bed.

Police searched the home and arrested T.J.

"I knew this was over," he said.

Soon, the DEA task force swept up Ortiz Oliva's organization on 
federal charges, with Ortiz Oliva and most of the others sent to 
prison for a decade or more. Ortiz Oliva, in federal prison in 
Florida, did not respond to three letters seeking comment.

T.J., stripped of his assets, pleaded guilty and went to prison for 
just under two years.

When he left prison, he reunited with his wife and their younger 
children. Their two-bedroom apartment has a wall hanging that reads, 
"With God All Things Are Possible."

T.J. works as a $10-an-hour laborer and shrugs off memories of the 
easy-money days. The cash, the women and the fancy vehicles all fed 
his craving for attention, he said. Now, he said, he needs only the 
attention of his wife and children.

In his dealing days, he didn't feel responsible for the mayhem caused 
by trafficking. "I never killed, stabbed or robbed anybody," T.J. said.

That has changed, too.

"People were getting hurt and getting killed over marijuana," he 
said. He sees that Ortiz Oliva's network preyed on young customers.

"I realize the damage I caused," T.J. said. "Every time I think about 
it, I feel like ..."

He finished with an expletive.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom