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Jason “Juice” Loayza, 29, was scheduled for a first federal court appearance appearance Wednesday in Burlington following his capture on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito said.
The smuggling operation lasted several months before officers at Fort Dix spotted a drone with a dangling fishing line hovering above a housing unit, Carpenito said.
They found the bolts removed to a rooftop hatch, along with an inmate with wet knees and a bag containing contraband, he said.
The officers also found a cell phone that had been used to communicate with Arteaga, who was an inmate at the facility beginning in June 2017 and has just been released a month earlier, Carpenito said.
Arteaga's iCloud account contained screenshots of Google search results for “fort dix weather” and live chats with an unidentified co-conspirator, the U.S. attorney said.
A few days earlier, Jersey City police questioned a man in the common area of Arteaga’s home who Carpenito said was carrying several plastic bags filled with cellphones.
The man told them he’d come to meet Loayza, he said.
A search of Arteaga’s apartment turned up empty cell phone boxes, cell phone chargers, empty boxes of SIM cards and several phones, as well as a box from a phone that had been shipped to him the day before the drop, Carpenito said.
A suitcase in Arteaga’s bedroom contained his driver’s license, 20 packets of suboxone sublingual film and a plastic bag containing more than a half-ounce of a heroin/fentanyl mix.
One of the seized phones was used to coordinate the drone drops, including one that brought Hydroxycut drink mix, vacuum-sealed bags of tobacco, cellphone batteries, reading glasses and a cell phone, the U.S. attorney said.
Among the other evidence, Carpenito said, are an aerial photo of Fort Dix marked with yellow lines and an accompanying text explaining the positioning.
FCI Fort Dix is a low-security federal correctional institution with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp at the Joint McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst U.S. Army base in Burlington County, about 16 miles south-southeast of Trenton.
Arteaga is charged with conspiring to smuggle contraband and to defraud the United States and possessing with the intent to distribute a substance containing heroin and fentanyl.
Two other men, Adrian Goolcharran and Nicolo Denichilo, have also been charged with participating in the scheme. Both remain free on bail, Carpenito said.
Carpenito credited agents of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General’s New Jersey office, the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations Detachment 307, and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Northeast Regional Inspector General’s Office with the investigation leading to the charges.
He also thanked Federal Bureau of Prisons personnel at Fort Dix, the FBI, investigating agents from his own office, and officers with the Pemberton Borough, Pemberton Township and Chesterfield police departments for their assistance.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Cari Fais and Jeffrey Manis of Carpenito’s Special Prosecutions Division in Newark are handling the case.
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