El Salvador’s Attorney General’s Office and the National Civil Police dismantled a structure allegedly dedicated to distributing cocaine and marijuana in the departments of San Miguel, Morazán and La Unión.[1] Ten people were captured on court orders after a ten-month investigation into three interconnected cells that supplied and sold drugs in eastern El Salvador.[2] The cells used auto-tinting workshops, food outlets, vehicle-rental businesses, corner shops, fruit stalls and a parcel-shipping agency to the United States as fronts for storing, moving and selling the drugs.[2]
The FGR named Diógenes de Jesús Benítez Escobar as the alleged leader and main supplier, working with his son Anthony de Jesús Benítez Benítez, who handled logistics, weighing and deliveries in San Miguel and La Unión.[2] The other eight detainees were alleged wholesale suppliers, route intermediaries and local distributors in San Miguel, Corinto, Lislique, Sociedad and Cacaopera, with Reina Ester Medina described as storing and selling in Lislique.[2] Officers carried out 15 searches, concentrated in the Miralvalle subdivision, colonia Milagro de la Paz and Ciudad Jardín in the city of San Miguel and in the districts of Corinto in Morazán and Lislique in La Unión.[2] The searches seized $8,928.13 in cash, 18 mobile phones, seven vehicles and several portions of cocaine, and the cash from the alleged leader alone, $4,100, tested positive for cocaine traces.[2]
The ten detainees were to be handed to the courts to face proceedings for illicit trafficking, proposal and conspiracy to commit illicit trafficking, and illicit association.[2] The prosecution said the network ran from February to November 2026, with surveillance, monitoring and police-controlled purchases used to identify its members.[3] No weight of marijuana or cannabis seized in the operation was published in any of the accounts.[1]
