FARGO — Two SWAT teams moved stealthily into place early on May 29, 2002. Their mission: arrest Michael Gamboa, kingpin of the largest drug ring in the state, who was living and working in an auto detailing business, a front for a drive-in methamphetamine shop.
Cass County Sheriff’s Deputy Tony Krogh — assigned to the Cass County Drug Task Force at the time — burst through the first glass door. A second steel door blocked entrance into the building, but Krogh and other members of the Red River Valley SWAT Team were prepared.
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Everyone knew their roles. With more than a dozen law enforcement agencies behind the raid, Fargo police officers lined the perimeter and investigators waited for the all clear, but Jesse Jahner, now Cass County sheriff, didn’t know what the residential area of the complex looked like.
Did you know?
“The Gamboa case is to date the largest drug-trafficking conspiracy ever brought to justice in North Dakota and was responsible for approximately 300-500 pounds of methamphetamine with a street value of approximately $18 million,” the DEA reported in a May 5, 2003 press release.The raid was his first as a member of the SWAT team, Jahner told Forum News Service. He was a breacher, and he was nervous.
“Being my first one, it was probably more of the unknown because it was a high-risk search warrant,” he said. “Gamboa was a big player in town.”
“Our concerns were that Gamboa had bodyguards or a security element with him,” Jahner said.
With no more need for stealth, SWAT used a breaching ram to break through the steel door, and then a flash-bang grenade was thrown, according to trial records in storage at the Quentin N. Burdick U.S. Courthouse.
“Police. Search warrant,” another SWAT member shouted.
At the east end of the building, glass shattered. Quickly, SWAT team members moved toward the sound. In less than a minute, Gamboa was in handcuffs.
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Jeffrey Stickney, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent stationed in Fargo, was not far behind. Gamboa, with closely cropped hair, mustache and goatee, dressed in long shorts, had tried to escape through a window, but they had stopped him. Stickney found 4 ounces of meth in one pocket and $483 in his wallet, according to court documents.
Gamboa, 27, who was wanted on outstanding probation violation warrants from Grand Forks, North Dakota, and Polk County, Minnesota, was “confronted, he was put down, arrested, cuffed, brought out after a while,” and then taken to jail, according to Eric Christianson, another DEA agent.
In the main section of the shop, a K-9 search dog started barking at a white Lincoln Continental. Agents pried open the trunk and discovered more meth — about a pound worth — and beneath it a cache of assault-style weapons, banana clips and ammunition.
By the end of the six-hour search, law enforcement confiscated Gamboa’s drug packaging operations — digital scales, heat sealers, cellphones, glass pipes for smoking meth, jewelry — and arrested a dealer named Garner Galland.
On the walls were handwritten “drug notes,” written in code with a name and a money figure such as “Gipper 3,000,” according to court documents. Christianson, an agent since 1997, deciphered the code to mean a customer’s name and what was owed.
Two hours after the search ended, Christianson heard a noise inside the building. Gamboa’s brother Edward and a woman named Kara Froelich were found hiding in a small furnace room. Close by, law enforcement discovered a fanny pack containing $8,852 in small denominations.
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Street value: $18 million
Printed trial transcripts and court documents show how police conducted the raid and specific details about Gamboa’s trial.
“The Gamboa case is to date the largest drug-trafficking conspiracy ever brought to justice in North Dakota and was responsible for approximately 300-500 pounds of methamphetamine with a street value of approximately $18 million,” the DEA reported in a May 5, 2003, press release.
One by one, Gamboa’s enforcers and dealers were arrested, and they all turned on him. First, in November 2002, 28-year-old Delwin Jo “DJ” White Lightning agreed to testify against Gamboa. He was the meth ring’s Bismarck distributor, working out of an auto shop on Airport Road.
Gamboa smuggled at least a pound of meth to him every month, beginning in the fall of 2001 and until March 2002, bringing in a revenue of about $100,000.
He received a 12-year sentence after pleading guilty, according to the DEA.
In a separate hearing a month after White Lightning turned, enforcers Cassidy Kyle Stich and James “Bork” Barkowski turned state’s evidence for lighter sentences. They received similar prison sentences of about 12 years each.
Gamboa’s older brothers held out longer, refusing to plead guilty to conspiracy to distribute meth charges until after Michael Gamboa’s trial.
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Rolando, 38, the father of four children who worked as a boiler operator at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, was arrested in July 2002 on drug charges. He threatened people with guns and beat a man with a baseball bat, according to a Sept. 27, 2002, news story published by The Forum.
He received a 15-year prison sentence.
Edward Gamboa, 31, who had no prior criminal record, was sentenced to nearly five years’ imprisonment. His supervised release began in April 2007, but he fell back into the drug world, and by 2012 was on federal drug trafficking charges.
The ringleader
Michael Gamboa faced his charges in court alone. His dealers had turned on him. The lavish life he once enjoyed was reduced to cement walls and strict rules.
The prosecutorial team argued that Gamboa was the ringleader of a violent, at times psychotic drug ring that pushed more than 400 pounds of meth into North Dakota and Minnesota.
Gamboa’s attorney, James Hovey, tried to argue that Gamboa was “someone blessed by the government to make drug transactions. He was under duress or coercion.”
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Hovey also painted a picture fit for a Blockbuster movie of dangerous unknown assassins, vandals and pyrotechnics who set Gamboa’s house on fire, threatened his parents, and forced him to make bad choices.
The prosecution argued back, saying Gamboa’s conspiracy was months long, and that he was no longer a confidential informant. If he had concerns, he could have gone to the police for assistance.
“They didn’t go to the police because they didn’t believe the police could protect them,” Hovey argued.
“I don’t accept this. He has had more dealings, cooperative dealings with law enforcement people than 90 percent of the general public or the criminal elements,” said U.S. District Judge Rodney Webb.
With all the evidence against him, including White Lightning’s and Stich’s testimonies, as well nearly a dozen dealers, the trial showed Gamboa was the boss, the kingpin, directing storage, and controlling distribution of meth.
Who was El Kaote?
In court transcripts, there was no further mention of El Kaote — the assassin named as wanting to kill Assistant U.S. Attorney Keith Reisenauer on the first day of Gamboa’s trial.
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Hovey, Gamboa’s attorney, told Forum News Service in a recent interview that he remembered meeting in chambers on the first day, but could not recall the name El Kaote. Citing attorney-client privilege, Hovey declined to talk further about the case.
It was Gamboa’s enforcer, Stich, from Fergus Falls, Minnesota, who shed light on the assassination plot, which extended to the judge and anyone else who worked with law enforcement.
As an enforcer, Stich did what he was told, at times beating dealers who owed money or who fell under suspicion of being a snitch. He met Gamboa in prison in 2001 and began selling a pound of meth after his release.
Because of his large size, Gamboa began keeping Stich close. He witnessed at least 10 deliveries of at least 10 pounds of meth each, he testified in court. In total, more than 400 pounds of meth passed through Gamboa’s hands, Stich said.
After his arrest, Stich was placed in Grand Forks County Correctional Center with Gamboa, and that is when the so-called kingpin revealed who was behind the death threats.
“It was Gamboa who issued the threats to kill Reisenauer and also the judge,” Reisenauer said in court. “There were also threats to kill anyone who cooperated with the government.”
Stich confirmed the origin of the threats in court to Norman Anderson, who was on the prosecution’s team.
“Aaron Allen, Mike Lindstrom, your colleague, Mr. Reisenauer, the judge, pretty much everybody and anybody who got in his way. Anybody who was named in the papers. Anybody who was going to lock him up,” Stich said.
Webb, the judge, was not amused, and told the court that living under threats was simply part of his job.
“Been there, done that, folks. This whole matter is certainly scary in the way it developed. Not because of threats to me or Mr. Reisenauer or anybody else, but the testimony about violence is prevalent,” Webb said.
In the hopes of curbing further drug-running ambitions, Gamboa was sentenced harshly: two life sentences plus 30 years. The damage, however, was done, and although Gamboa’s drug ring was considered to be the largest case in North Dakota’s history in 2002, it was soon overshadowed by a new methamphetamine threat in 2005.
The warehouse where Gamboa worked and lived at 2705 5th Ave. S. is no longer standing. The area is now used to park vehicles, Jahner said.
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