In the past two years, the amount of methamphetamine seized in the mail has dropped after the arrests of "several of the major leaders dealing ice," according to Guam Customs and Quarantine Director Ignacio Q. "Ike" Peredo.
On Tuesday afternoon, Peredo appeared as a guest speaker for the Rotary Club of Tumon Bay's membership meeting at the Hyatt Regency Guam to discuss the transport of illegal substances and how Guam Customs has worked toward seizing them at the island's borders.
Primarily discussing methamphetamine, Peredo explained in his first year of being the Guam Customs director, there were about 40 pounds of methamphetamine seized in the mail.
The following year, however, the amount of methamphetamine seized in 2020 was about 100 pounds, and in 2021 it was nearly 200 pounds.
In 2020, Peredo said he realized there was a "very, very serious problem with methamphetamine entering our borders, particularly the postal system."
To address the problem, Peredo discussed the ways he worked toward ensuring methamphetamine doesn't cross our borders.
"We started seeing an increase in 2020, and the reason for this is that we managed to put together a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Postal Service so that we can not only deter but detect the movement of meth going to the post office," Peredo explained.
"We decided to create a task force and deputize Customs officers to work with (the U.S. Postal Service) so that we can have much more leverage insofar as identifying methamphetamine being trafficked through the mail," Peredo added while referring to a graph depicting the amount of methamphetamine seized in the mail during his presentation to Rotarians.
After reaching nearly 200 pounds of seized methamphetamine at the post offices in 2021, Peredo stated the partnership with the Postal Service has continued and attributed to a decrease in seizures in 2022 and 2023. Additionally, Peredo said other efforts, such as investing in drug K-9s, Tru-Narc detection devices and employing more Customs officers, have resulted in the decrease.
However, a Rotarian posed the question regarding the drop in seized drugs in the past two years to Ignacio, to which the Customs director responded the arrest of major drug dealers has also resulted in less methamphetamine being mailed to Guam.
"The reason why we started seeing the trend going down for 2022 and 2023 is because we managed to arrest several of the major dealers that were dealing ice," said Peredo, who added there are now mostly "small-time" methamphetamine traffickers.
According to Post files, Melvin John Salas Naputi was a leader of a drug organization who was arrested in 2021 by the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, which consisted of Guam Customs and the U.S. Postal Service along with the Guam Police Department; U.S. Homeland Security Investigations; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Naputi was sentenced to serve 30 years in federal prison in January this year, Post files state.
Unsealed warrants
In the past week, several applications for warrants relating to packages containing methamphetamine were unsealed in the U.S. District Court of Guam.
Two of the warrants were from 2020 and confirmed 917 grams, or about two pounds of meth, were sent to a Dededo residence in August 2020, while another containing 7,539 grams, or about 16 pounds, was sent to a Mongmong residence in September 2020. Both were mailed from cities in California, the warrants stated.
The remaining warrants recently unsealed showed that, throughout 2023, about 22 pounds of methamphetamine was mailed to Guam but were seized by the authorities.
Starting in January 2023, a package with 1,247 grams was mailed to a Talo'fo'fo residence from Washington state.
In March 2023, there were two packages sent from Las Vegas, one with 2,275 grams of meth that was sent to the Tamuning Post office, while another that was sent to a Barrigada residence contained 1,844 grams of meth.
In September 2023, a package from Florida sent to a Dededo residence contained 234 grams, while another sent from California to the Hagåtña Post office contained 462 grams.
The following month, in October 2023, five packages addressed to different villages were seized by the authorities after being discovered to contain methamphetamine.
Four of the packages were sent from California to the southern villages of Sånta Rita-Sumai, Hågat, Humåtak and Talo'fo'fo. The package to Sånta Rita-Sumai contained 232 grams, the Hågat package from California contained 1,027 grams, the Humåtak package contained 453 grams and the Talo'fo'fo package contained 31 grams.
The last unsealed warrant stated a package sent to a Dededo residence from California in December 2023 contained 462 grams.
