Drug trafficker who kept $1.5M in cash in South Dallas home sentenced to 20 years in prison

DALLAS - A cocaine and meth trafficker who hid more than $1.5M in a South Dallas trap house was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on Wednesday.

49-year-old Hector Manuel Castro-Quirino pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute controlled substances in September 2022.

Court documents say an informant told law enforcement about the home on South Acres Drive in Dallas.

2 Carrollton adults led fentanyl ring that led to deaths, hospitalizations of students, feds say

After a few weeks of surveillance and undercover purchases a SWAT team raided the home on July 13, 2021.

Agents and officers found 594 grams of meth and more than 1,440 grams of cocaine in the home, along with 14 firearms and $1,595,185 in cash.

The money was stuffed inside tube socks, shoe boxes, a trash bag and a bankers box.

Castro-Quirino later told officers he received a kilogram of cocaine each week and a kilogram of meth each month, regularly sold the drugs, according to plea papers.

Castro-Quirino's common law wife, Vanesa Cervantes, kept the books for the operation and was also sentenced to 21 months in prison.