Opinion ID: 6328976
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Jetta

Text: Detective Cooper testiﬁed that on February 28, 2017, a pole camera captured video of Gomez backing out of his garage in a silver Volkswagen Jetta. A few days later, Gomez and several others were seen with the Jetta in an alley behind Gomez’s apartment. Shortly thereafter, security cameras covering a Wal-Mart parking lot showed the Jetta being loaded onto a commercial car carrier. Oﬃcer Correa noted that a Nos. 20-2673 & 21-1158 7 white SUV he had surveilled previously was monitoring the loading and left upon completion. Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent and HIDTA task force member Russell Andrew Dykema testiﬁed that he shot video of the silver Jetta being loaded onto another car carrier on April 18, 2017. The jury also saw this video. After the Jetta was loaded onto the carrier, Special Agent Dykema followed it for “hours” into Illinois. A number of other oﬃcers arrived, stopped the car carrier, inspected the Jetta, and found $145,380 and a GPS tracking device with an audio recorder. About a month later, a phone conversation that Gomez had with two men in Mexico only identiﬁed as Peñasco and Tomas—characterized by the government as the sources of supply—was intercepted. They discussed the seizure of the Jetta and the cash in it. They thought it was very “strange.”