King County drug dealer busted shipping heroin hidden in chocolates

A South King County man is behind bars for swapping out hazelnuts for heroin in an elaborate scheme to smuggle drugs to Alaska.

The man, identified in federal charging documents as Jesus Rodriguez Horta, is accused of unwrapping the signature gold foil on Ferrero Rocher chocolate candies, replacing the chocolate and hazelnut with black tar heroin, wrapping them back up and shipping them to Alaska.

Detectives determined Horta, 46, was a main supplier of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine to street level dealers around Shoreline, North Seattle and Edmonds, says King County Sheriff’s Sgt. DB Gates.

During their investigation they discovered he was also sending packages through the United States Postal Service to an address in Juneau. Detectives intercepted one of the packages shipped from a Shoreline post office and found the heroin-laced chocolates.

“It looked pretty close to commercially available candy people can buy at any store,” Gates says. “They’re going to continue looking for ways that the bad guys are going to disguise drugs. It’s always us trying to figure out their latest ways they’ve come up with.”

Postal Inspectors and police in Juneau served a warrant in Alaska February 28 and arrested one man, while King County detectives and a SWAT team served a warrant at a hotel in Kent and arrested Horta.

The investigation uncovered approximately 745 grams of heroin, 135 grams of methamphetamine, 90 grams of cocaine and 300 grams of ephedrine. While authorities did not find any signs of chocolates in the room, charging documents say they did find “plastic molds, which matched the shape and size of the balls of heroin concealed in the box of chocolates,” in Horta’s hotel room.

Gates says authorities waited until now to publicize the case because there were sensitive elements involved they did not want released to the public.

The case is ongoing and is being handled by the Postal Inspectors.