Carly Crofts, 29, of Hemet and Miguel Angel Armenta, 49, of Murrieta were taken into custody Friday and booked into the Murrieta jail on suspicion of narcotics trafficking via USPS.

Crofts posted an undisclosed bond hours later and was released from custody. Armenta remained behind bars on unspecified bail.

According to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, the suspects were allegedly smuggling drugs to different inmates — 42-year-old Saul Arevalo of Bloomington and 32-year-old Daniel Morales Jr. of Cathedral City.

Details on the two detainees and the reasons for their detention were unavailable.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Chris Wedel said the agency’s Corrections Investigation Bureau, in coordination with the Gang Intelligence Unit, initiated a probe in November 2024 after uncovering evidence narcotics were reaching the Murrieta jail by way of the Postal Service.

In the ensuing months, sufficient evidence was gathered that pointed to the alleged suppliers and recipients, culminating in search warrants being obtained and served at Crofts’ and Armenta’s respective residences Friday morning, Wedel said.

“Investigators seized evidence related to the jail narcotics smuggling investigation,” he said.

Arevalo and Morales were notified that they had been named in the investigation. Their custody status did not change.

Jail records indicated that Arevalo has been at the county lock-up since 2017. Morales has been there since 2022.

“This investigation was part of the sheriff’s office’s ongoing mission to prevent narcotics from entering our correctional facilities,” according to Wedel.

The case was expected to be submitted to the District Attorney’s Office for review.

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The indictment accuses the suspects of trying to sneak fentanyl, methamphetamine and heroin into the facility by hiding the drugs inside of people who purposefully got themselves arrested. Fentanyl-laced pills could be sold in jail at 10 times the regular street price, according to the Department of Justice. 

“The smuggling of drugs into our jails, particularly with the emergence of fentanyl, has dramatically increased inmate deaths and medical emergencies within our corrections division,” Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said. 

The suspects face a minimum of five years in prison if convicted as charged. 

Federal investigators do not know when the alleged drug smuggling scheme started but know it continued into late 2022 after they intercepted phone calls where people talked about sneaking drugs into a Riverside County custody facility. They named Andrew Jesus Ayala, 46, the scheme’s alleged mastermind, according to the indictment. 

Ayala and a Riverside street gang would recruit people willing to smuggle the drugs inside their bodies. The crew would arrange temporary housing for the drug mules before and after they purposely got arrested to deliver the drugs, according to the indictment. 

In one instance, a suspect tried to smuggle 1.75 ounces of meth inside of his body. However, an X-ray machine revealed the contraband. 

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The busts took place between Feb. 11 and Feb. 17, according to the agency.

302 pounds stashed in SUV’s doors, fenders, spare tire

The first ill-fated smuggling attempt took place on Feb. 11, when a 72-year-old man tried to enter the U.S. in a red SUV, according to a CBP statement.

“Anomalies” detected during a secondary inspection led CBP officers to enlist the help of a K9, which alerted to the presence of narcotics, officials said.

“CBP officers extracted a total of 100 packages concealed within the vehicle’s doors, fenders and spare tire,” the statement said. “The contents of the packages were tested and identified as methamphetamine with a total weight of 302 pounds.”

770 pounds concealed in big rig

Another major seizure took place on Feb. 13, when a 30-year-old man tried to make his way into the country in a big rig via the Tecate Cargo Facility, according to the agency.

Officers again grew suspicious of the vehicle.

“CBP officers conducted a physical examination of the tractor-trailer and discovered 65 packages hidden within the flatbed of the trailer,” the statement said.

The packages were found to contain 697 pounds of methamphetamine and 73 pounds of cocaine, authorities said.

437 pounds pulled from flatbed trailer

Another commercial vehicle came through the port of entry on Feb. 17.

A drug-sniffing dog sounded an alert, leading officers to discover 38 packages of methamphetamine hidden in the floor of a flatbed trailer, according to CBP.

The drugs weighed 437 pounds.

Rosa Hernandez, who serves as director of both the Otay Mesa and Tecate ports of entry, commended the sharp eyes, and noses, of the human and canine officers.

“All CBP components are vital assets to our counter-narcotics operations and provide proficient layers of enforcement,,” she said. “Our staff is dedicated to the mission and will continue to protect our communities and stop the growth of transnational criminal organizations by applying officer’s skills and tools in our layered enforcement approach.”

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LOS ANGELES, CA — The leader of a Southern California-based drug ring that shipped kilos of cocaine to Alaska on commercial flights and through the mail has pleaded guilty to a federal narcotics charge, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Raul Cisneros Jr., 45, of Compton, pleaded guilty on May 9 to one count of possession with intent to distribute cocaine. He’s the eighth person to be convicted in the case, according to federal prosecutors.

Cisneros managed the operations of a drug trafficking organization from at least July 2014 to August 2016 that sold cocaine and methamphetamine, prosecutors said.

Law enforcement stopped Cisneros in his car in October 2015 while he was en route to an accomplice’s house to pick up money. Inside his car, Cisneros had over 22 lbs. of cocaine packaged in five bundles, which he intended to sell to customers, as well as $5,003 in cash, prosecutors said.

After obtaining a search warrant for Cisneros’ home, law enforcement seized over 66 lbs. of cocaine, 167.7 grams of crack cocaine and over 1 lbs. of methamphetamine from his kitchen cabinets, prosecutors said.

Investigators also found four guns, 72 rounds of ammunition, hundreds of used green cellophane wrappers and a money counter. Inside the truck of Cisneros’ Honda Accord, agents found 15.5 lbs. of cocaine wrapped in seven packages of green cellophane, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Agents also recovered $568,357 in cash proceeds from drug deals, prosecutors said.

Cisneros, who has been in federal custody since October 2020, is due back in court for sentencing Aug. 8. He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in federal prison and a maximum sentence of life in prison.

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The amount of drugs seized included 376 pounds of methamphetamine, 1.4 kilograms of cocaine, 37.4 pounds of fentanyl and 600,000 fentanyl tablets with the potential to provide  ingredients for nearly 10 million lethal doses and were worth an estimated $16 million. 

The news does not end there. These drugs were part of a Mexican cartel trafficking operation and the investigation also resulted in the arrest of 15 people. Unfortunately, the arrests included that of an allegedly corrupt Riverside County Sheriff’s deputy. 

Details of the deputy’s involvement were passed to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department which led to the deputy’s arrest with 104 pounds of fentanyl pills in his possession.

Although Riverside County Sheriff Bianco may spin the story and point to the deputy’s arrest as proof his department is cleaning house, it begs a question regarding why the deputy was operating as a corrections officer in the first place, especially with all the attention placed on the department with the spike in incustody deaths in Riverside jails in 2022, where drug overdoses played a major role as recorded in a Black Voice News in a special report released in January. 

No matter how you slice it, ongoing reports about the antics of Riverside County deputies is bad and getting worse. 

When news broke of this most recent arrest of another Riverside County deputy for their role in illegal activities, it appeared as just another day in an agency that more and more seems rife with malfeasance.  Has the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department become a team of lawless, law enforcement officers who are currently being led by a sheriff with questionable performance as the county’s top law enforcement leader?

I am not challenging what Bianco’s capabilities were as a deputy, etc. while he worked his way up the law enforcement ladder before running for sheriff. We have no way of knowing how he performed as a corrections officer at the Robert Presley Detention Center or while on patrol or working narcotics in the City of Lake Elsinore. Nor can I criticize his performance in his various administrative positions, supervisory or management roles over the years. 

What I will say, however, is that since pinning on the badge of county sheriff, Bianco’s ability to effectively lead an agency with oversight responsibility tor five jail facilities, six court buildings, a civil bureau, the Coroner’s Bureau, Public Administrator’s Office, nearly 20  contract cities, about 4,000 employees and an operating budget of nearly a billion dollars, again and again his leadership acumen is called into question. 

Bianco has remained a lightning rod since he took office in 2019, sparked by a laundry list of curious mishaps that include everything from having to be ordered by a judge during the peak of the COVID-19 crisis to protect people in custody in Riverside County jails to refusing the state vaccine mandate for Sheriff Department employees to having to defend his membership in the now, seditious conspiracy, involved Oath Keepers  to being investigated by the CA Attorney General for alleged Civil Rights violations—the list of his questionable actions has continued to expand.

The infamous list above does not include what appears to be rampant lawlessness by Riverside County sheriff deputies on his watch. 

We can begin by recalling that last September, seven women who had spent time in a Riverside County jail filed federal cases against Riverside County that alleged liability for sexual abuse admitted by correctional deputy, Christian Heidecker, who pleaded guilty to 11 felonies Feb. 23, and was sentenced to five years in prison.  

Also, last September, two Riverside County deputies were arrested and charged with drug possession — Brent Bishop Turnwall, 22, and Jorge Oceguera-Rocha, 25. Although neither were accused of distribution drugs in the jails, Turnwall was arrested while at work at Cois M. Byrd Detention Center. He was charged with being under the influence. 

That same month, another deputy, Oceguera-Rocha, a corrections officer at Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility, was charged with possession of narcotics for sale and transporting it for sale. At the time of his arrest, he purportedly had about 100 pounds of packaged fentanyl pills in his vehicle. 

During an interview with Black Voice News last year, Bianco spoke about the 2022 increase in drug overdoses in the jails stating, “There is a market to purposely smuggle drugs into jail,” he said, claiming that people get arrested so they can bring drugs into the facilities. “They swallow it, they insert it, they’re underneath their fingernails, their toenails. They do everything they can to try and get it in, and unfortunately, sometimes they make it.”

Bianco also acknowledged that the deaths were unfortunate and then went on to say, “but it certainly wasn’t at the hands of our deputies.”  Well, maybe not, but who can say with certainty, because one thing we know for sure is that some of his deputies/corrections officers do not appear to have clean hands.

As rumors began to surface that Bianco is now considering a bid for governor, it leaves one to wonder whether or not this man has any self awareness. Why would we consider electing someone like him to serve as governor when he continues to demonstrate the limits of his leadership skills and abilities to lead the Sheriff’s Department? 

We can not wait to see whether rumors of his run for governor come true. We should act now to spread the word regarding his short comings. This is important because his campaign is certain to be well funded by police unions and other like minded individuals. 

For this reason, it is important that we educate our family, friends and neighbors about the works of Bianco and deputies under his stewardship, so that when, and if, a Bianco campaign for governor is launched, they are well informed and do not believe the hype that is certain to come. 

Of course, this is just my opinion. I’m keeping it real.

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