A South Carolina woman has been arrested and charged with trafficking cocaine and possession with intent to distribute marijuana after deputies caught her attempting to ship three kilos of cocaine to her home.
Investigators from the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office say that they received a tip about a large parcel of cocaine, which was intended to be delivered to Quanisha Manago in February. Officials then partnered with several federal agencies to intercept the package.
When deputies retrieved the parcel, they found two large bricks of compressed powder inside. They say it weighed around six and a half pounds.
Lancaster County Sheriff Barry Faile estimates that the cocaine was valued at $180,000 and was addressed to Manago, 28.
According to authorities, an undercover agent delivered the parcel to Manago, who retrieved the package, put it in the back of a 2012 Ford Focus then proceeded to take off with the contraband. But before she could get away, she was arrested and charged with a felony.
“This was a lot of cocaine, and thanks to all who participated it will never hit the street,” Faile told KALB.
Investigations are ongoing, including authorities who are working to find the source of the cocaine and whether it was shipped domestically or internationally.
In 2016, cocaine accounted for almost 20% of all drug trafficking offenses. Methamphetamine accounted for 33.6%, marijuana accounted for 17.6%, heroin accounted for 14.4% and crack accounted for 8.1%, according to figures compiled by the American Addiction Centers.
The top five locations where drugs were trafficked the most were the Western District of Texas, the Southern District of Texas, Arizona, the Southern District of California and New Mexico.
According to the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime, “the cocaine market presents a clear threat at [the] global level. The current situation is marked by well-defined locations of production (in the Andean-Amazonian region of South America) as well as consumption, with close to four-fifths of users to be found in the Americas and Europe. This in turn leads to trafficking routes from a circumscribed origin to specific, even if far-flung, destinations, while some parts of the world play a crucial role as transit regions.”
