The Irving Police Department has announced the results of an investigation that was started last year related to illegal drug and gun sales. They revealed that three men were sentenced, with a fourth to be sentenced later this month.
According to the Irving PD, the four men used social media to recruit teenagers for the purpose of selling drugs and guns for them.
Ricardo Rosas Garcia, 24, who prosecutors say was the ringleader, was sentenced to nineteen years in federal prison. Two of Garcia’s co-conspirators were sentenced to three and five years in prison.
Prosecutors said the group recruited teenagers on social media to help them sell drugs and guns in high schools throughout the Irving area.
Officer Robert Reeves of the Irving PD said the men are “tapping” into the group of young adults in a school district with over 30,000 students and trying to use the network to “facilitate their greed.”
According to Reeves, the investigation started last year after Irving PD received a tip from a school resource officer. Reeves said the tip prompted an undercover operation that lasted months.
Court documents revealed that Garcia was undocumented. He was convicted on three felony drug charges in 2018, prior to this latest conviction. Garcia was deported in 2019, but returned to the United States and was arrested in August 2020.
“He went to jail,” Reeves said. “While he was in jail, he decides to get on that phone there in the jail and start calling his three co-conspirators and starts giving them the account passwords and account information as to how to advertise for the selling of illegal narcotics.”
Garcia’s three co-conspirators were identified as 20-year-old Anthony Isaac Ventura, 25-year-old Addiel Isaias Portillo, and 26-year-old Uziel Hernandez. The three men were arrested within a month, with Portillo and Ventura already sentenced and Hernandez to be sentenced later this October.
Irving police said all four men had been connected to multiple violent crimes in Irving.
