The trucker who hauled nearly $4M worth of cocaine and heroin through Bucks County was sentenced to state prison

A Texas long-haul trucker whose DUI stop revealed a cache of nearly $4 million worth of illegal narcotics he was hauling through Pennsylvania was sentenced Tuesday to 7½ to 15 years in state prison.

Christian Ochoa, 29, was carrying thousands of doses of heroin and cocaine on behalf of a Mexican drug cartel, Bucks County Assistant District Attorney Megan Stricker said Tuesday during his trial in Doylestown. And had a Bedminster Township patrol officer not spotted Ochoa driving erratically in a rented Jeep last January, she said, the drugs would likely have reached their destination in New York City.

“He was capable of bringing in legitimate money, but opted instead to do this,” Stricker said. “It doesn’t matter who pulled him in. ... He wasn’t thinking of his girlfriend in Mexico or his girlfriend’s son. He was thinking of the quick buck he could make by peddling poison and killing people.”

Ochoa’s defense attorney, Louis Busico, urged Bucks County Judge Raymond F. McHugh to acquit his client of drug trafficking charges. Busico said prosecutors had made only a “prospective argument” that Ochoa was involved in the sale of the drugs, and said the case suffered from a “tremendous lack of evidence” that he had overseen any direct transactions.

Busico said Ochoa, who has no criminal record, was a legitimate businessman who had been lured into carrying the drugs on the promise of making some extra money.

“I think when the court looks at the facts of the case and looks at the full picture of what went on here, it’ll see he was pulled in by others on the promise of a fast payday, and it blew up in his face,” Busico said.

McHugh disagreed, and found Ochoa guilty of two counts of possession with intent to deliver.

Ochoa first encountered police in January 2021, when was stopped in a rented Jeep on suspicion of driving under the influence, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest. Inside the vehicle, officers discovered two pounds of heroin and nearly 20 pounds of cocaine, as well as $9,000.

During an interview with detectives, Ochoa said he was a trucker and had been told by a contact in Mexico to drive his tractor trailer to a location in California, leave it unlocked, and then deliver the package left inside to a woman in Philadelphia, prosecutors said. That woman, Edith Rodriguez Cardenas, was in the passenger seat of the Jeep when Ochoa was pulled over.

Rodriguez Cardenas, 28, is alleged by prosecutors to be a member of the drug organization Ochoa was working with. She, too, was convicted of drug charges and McHugh sentenced her to 8 to 16 years in state prison.ugh.fac

Ochoa eventually led detectives to his tractor trailer, which he had parked at a truck stop outside of Allentown. Inside the vehicle, investigators found another 20 pounds of heroin, a handgun, $34,000, and votive candles dedicated to Jesus Malverde, a folk hero known as the “patron saint of narcos.”