Sheriff: Massive Drug Bust Part of Mexican Drug War

******UPDATE: Friday, Jan. 15, 6:04 p.m.********
SLED now knows exactly how much cash it confiscated during this drug bust: $1,185,964.

A traffic stop in Greenville Wednesday has led to one of the biggest drug busts in Columbia in decades. The State Law Enforcement Division SWAT team served a search warrant Thursday morning at a house off Monticello Road north of Columbia. They arrested one man, 23-year-old Celso Soriano Vasquez, who they was armed with a handgun.

Inside the house, they found the bedrooms and closets filled with marijuana wrapped in plastic. SLED Capt. Roger Heaton says they don't know yet exactly how much marijuana they seized, but he estimates it'll be more than 2,000 pounds.

"This is some of the best marijuana I think I've ever seen. The big buds. It's sticky. It would be expensive, but we're just estimating at $1,000 a pound wholesale," he says. That means the wholesale value of what they seized is about $2 million.

SLED also found one kilo of cocaine in the house, worth an estimated $25-30,000 wholesale.

The bust came about after another man was stopped Wednesday for a traffic violation in Greenville. Greenville City police and SLED narcotics officers found about 40 pounds of marijuana in the car along with about $14,000 in cash. That led to the home in Richland County.

After serving the search warrant on that home, that led investigators to two more homes in Richland County. Inside one of them, they found enough to cash to fill four gym bags.

Capt. Heaton says, "We've been asked how much it is. We don't know. I can tell you there's 100s, 50s, large denominations. It would be an absolute wild guess to give you some number, but certainly in the six figures, the hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott says it's one of the biggest drug busts in the county in the last 30 years. Investigators say the marijuana was shipped in from Mexico, and Lott says it shows that the Mexican drug war has spread.

"I think you're seeing it here now. It's here. It's here in Richland County. It's in Greenville. It's in the state of South Carolina, and this is evidence of it here," he says. "This is not any small-time operation. This is a major operation. This demonstrates the amount of drugs that are coming in from Mexico that the Mexican cartels, the poison that they're bringing into our community."

SLED director Reggie Lloyd says the bust was a team effort, starting in Greenville when police and SLED narcotics officers kept investigating after the initial traffic stop. When their investigation led to Columbia, the Richland County Sheriff's Office and Columbia Police got involved. The agencies will get to split the cash that was seized and put it back into their war on drugs.

There have been only two arrests so far and Capt. Heaton says more are possible. Those involved will continue to broaden their investigation.

"We've got a lot of information to run down as to houses bought, rented, whatever, so forth and so on. How long were these folks here? And see what historical information we can gather and put together to go ahead and enhance this investigation to see just exactly where it may take us," he says.