photo credit: zeraien (flickr)

As an avid fan of Law and Order, these real life events seem to come straight from one of the show’s fictional story lines.

20 men are now in custody for transporting large amounts of cocaine, meth and heroin from the San Francisco Bay Area to Seattle.

The dealers are being charged with a variety of crimes including conspiracy, after apparently using ciphers to discuss deals and drug quantities openly.

“One of the more clever tactics used by the dealers was calling kilos of cocaine ‘houses’, and using addresses as prices. For example, when [...] the alleged ringleader of the local cartel, was overheard telling a potential customer that he should visit house number 23, it was (again, allegedly) a way of saying the brick of blow would cost 23 grand,” according to an article from the Seattle Weekly.

Spanish words were also used in their code. A “recamarita”, which translates to little bedroom, meant a half-kilo and fifteen kilos was a “quinceañera”, a fifteenth birthday party.

Even though the dealers used multiple disposable cell phones to communicate with each other, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was able to keep tabs on the men through wiretaps and using the GPS functions from their mobile phones to track movements.

With this information, the police executed search warrants on 18 residences, businesses and vehicles at which time they recovered the drugs.

24 pounds of methamphetamine, cocaine, crack cocaine and $35,000 in cash were found during these raids.

The investigation on this drug ring, which started in 2008, accounted for drugs also being distributed to locations in western Washington and Canada,

“Over the course of the entire investigation, law enforcement officers seized more than $700,000 in cash, 11 kilos of cocaine, 40 pounds of meth and four firearms,” according to an article from komonews.com.

Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Ed Green would be proud of this bust.