Reported by Bill Kelly, STATEWIDE Correspondent

A previous Statewide Perspective report, Meth (& It's in Grand Island, Big Time), began our coverage of methamphetamine traffic in Grand Island. In this report we look at the growing belief that the central Nebraska city has become something of a "hub" for drug traffic in the state as a whole.

The fourth pickup truck had just crossed into Hamilton County when a Nebraska State trooper pulled it over. Jose Vasquez and Daniel Delaroya said they were heading to Sioux City. Marco, the patrol's drug sniffing dog, became agitated when he made his rounds. Hidden inside the truck, according to police, were packages of methamphetamine, 34 pounds of it. By the time it was bought by addicts, it could be worth $1.5 million. Now the truck sits in the State Patrol impound lot. Vasquez and Delaroya are in federal custody charged with conspiracy to deliver meth, the most ever discovered by police in Nebraska.

[Lt. Bill Schlachter, Nebraska State Patrol] This is approximately three pounds of methamphetamine.

Lieutenant Bill Schlachter showed us a batch of meth confiscated in another interstate stop. With crank selling at $100 a gram, it does not take much for the shipment to make for a substantial profit.

[Lt. Schlachter] Some of it's getting shipped commercially in smaller quantities, you know, maybe a pound, half pound, whatever, and then some of it's being transported in vehicles in hidden compartments. We don't see and we don't read of many seizures of 100 pounds of meth like we used to read about with marijuana and even some large seizures of cocaine. Meth is a little bit more concise than just tie it down a little smaller and send it in smaller quantities.

[Maria Moran, Assistant U.S. Attorney.] It is frustrating.

Can you even put a finger on where it's originated from, if it's California, Arizona, Mexico?

[Moran] I believe it's Mexico.

At the federal courthouse in Omaha, Maria Moran has been prosecuting the wave of cases to come out of central Nebraska.

[Moran] I don't think there's one source. I think there's many sources there.

Is that going to make it harder?

[Moran] Sure, sure. Because you can't figure that you're going to try to attack the organization from below and keep going up and trying to get the supplier when there's -- you know, if there's one supplier, that's one thing, if there's 10, you got to do it 10 times.

Over 50 federal indictments have charged a varied cast of characters with conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. There are everything from local carpenters to Mexicans staying in Nebraska illegally and everything in between. Many are familiar with one another, but to date there has been no clear organization, no clear system for bringing in the meth identified.

[Moran] There's a lot of layers there, and I think it is real frustrating, and I know it's frustrating for the law enforcement, too. I mean, we haven't made that I know of one seizure out there where we're coming in with a big load of methamphetamine, and the guy, you know, in essence rolls over and says yes, I've been bringing it in here for six months, and I've been supplying this guy, this guy, and this guy. We haven't hit that.

[Lt. Schlachter] When you look at those organizations, they're kind of impromptu.

Law enforcement has come to understand that the meth trade in central Nebraska is not following traditional patterns of the drug trade.

[Lt. Schlachter] It used to be we'd have one here and three or four or five here and 20 here. Now we have 20 or 30 here and maybe one or two up there if we're lucky and sometimes we only have 20 and we're right there, because all 20 of these people can deal the same volume.

[Chris Rhea, Hall County Sheriff Deputy] You know, my opinion is they came out to the rural areas to where they could hold the drugs and operate in relative safety and without fear of, you know, the task force type operation looking at them.

Hall County Drug Investigator Chris Rhea is convinced dealers use Grand Island as a distribution point to get methamphetamine to the rest of the state of Nebraska.

[Rhea] You know, if you bring 10 pounds of meth into Grand Island, even if only a pound or two stays here -- you know, that's a considerable amount of drugs -- but then a pound or two may go to Lincoln or a pound or two may go to Omaha or a pound or two may go to Schuyler, Columbus, Lexington. You know, by the same token maybe they take 10 pounds to Lexington and two pounds will come into Grand Island. It just changes on a regular basis.

[Mark, former dealer] It's so easy to come by that you can basically go to any bar in Grand Island and if you wanted to ask enough people, you're going to find it. That's basically what I did.

Mark asked that we disguise his identity and he declined to talk about specific people that he did business with prior to his conviction for dealing. But his experience reveals how open and fluid the meth trade is in central Nebraska.

[Mark] Supply and demand. As long as there's people to pay the money, there's always people that will put it out no matter what the penalties are going to be.

Convicted mid-level drug dealers like Jose Cabrarra used a number of places around Grand Island shifting it around like a shell game where buyers knew there would be sellers. For one week out of a hotel room, the next an apartment, the next a trailer, like the one Refugia Sycarios owned and shared with her boyfriend, Raul Iberra-Valasquez.

[Moran] I guess I would consider him a mid-level dealer. He's obviously had access to the drug from somebody else. He was supplying a number of individuals, and I think he was supplying sometimes individuals equally involved as he was or in the same level of hierarchy as he was.

Court documents indicate individual dealers would shift their base of operations up and down Highway 30 from Alma to Merrick County selling to street dealers by the ounce, selling to other distributors by the pound when they had the quantity. Mark says there were plenty of mid-level distributors.

[Mark] Once a month, then it was like once every other week, then it was once a week, then I started buying it to actually pay for my habit, and it got so easy to get that I got so much of it, they started giving it to me to sell, and I bring the money back.

Local distributors like Valasquez would put the word out on the street that a new shipment had arrived, and that was all Mark really need to know or was told.

[Mark] They don't, how shall I say, take the people outside of their community well. They'll sell to you, yeah, but you don't go in there and say hey, buddy, how's it going and spend the day with them, you know.

Certainly business.

[Mark] Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. About the only thing I know is they're not who they tell you they are.

Always a different name?

[Mark] Mm-hmm, yeah. They have several -- several names.

Mark and a sizeable network of street dealers would earn money to pay for their own habit by selling to friends.

[Mark] How do I feel about having sold to friends? Well, it burned a lot of bridges. There was a lot of friendships that went out the window. I wished I had never started. Like I said, it's one of those things I can't take back.

You've had a lot of addictions.

[Mark] Yeah, yeah, sure have. A lot of...but I'm going to try to change that now.

Information from dozens of people arrested in Grand Island so far makes clear that Nebraska is a little different. The methamphetamine here is imported from out of state. Elsewhere in the Midwest, meth is made by local folks in homemade labs.

[Rhea] As long as there's the supply here being brought in, there's no need for anybody to cook it. My guess is if we cut off the people that are bringing it in, we'll end up like Missouri. Missouri has -- from talking to the investigators down there -- a terrible problem with labs. They took off several hundred during the course of a year.

While no major labs have been found in Nebraska, a couple of recent arrests where people were in possession of the raw chemicals used in making meth gives police concern. The final frustration -- it has been extremely difficult to get mid-level dealers to testify against those providing them with the drugs being imported, even in exchange for lower sentences. So while the seizure of million dollar load of meth may give investigators hope of finding one source of the pipeline, they already know that this business is not operating by rules that even other drug dealers have followed in the past. For Statewide, I'm Bill Kelly.