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Members of a special federal drug task force found the nearly 225-pound shipment after stopping Alejandro Nouel Lajud, age 39, of Yonkers, on the Turnpike in East Rutherford on Monday, Dec. 5, US Attorney for New Jersey Philip R. Sellinger said.
The drugs were divided into 95 brick-shaped packages each weighing a little over two pounds -- 70 of them containing cocaine and 25 holding fentanyl, Sellinger said.
A federal judge in Newark that same day ordered that Lajud remain held on drug charges.
Sellinger, meanwhile, credited members of the New York City-based Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) for the takedown.
The group unites members of various law enforcement agencies at all levels -- local, county, state and federal -- in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere who work side-by-side to "disrupt and dismantle the most significant drug traffickers, money launderers, gangs, and transnational criminal organizations" in the area, Sellinger said.
Those involved in the arrest and seizure included members of the New York/New Jersey High-Intensity Drug Trafficking team, he said.
Assistant US Attorney Jenny Chung of the OCDETF/Narcotics Unit in Newark is handling the case for the government, Sellinger said.
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