PHARR — Police arrested a woman and seized 5.5 pounds of fentanyl pills from her vehicle after stopping her for a defective brake lamp.
The pills Cynthia Patricia Perez Ruvalcaba allegedly had with her are similar in shape, size, and color to others found during a large bust earlier this month, according to a criminal complaint filed against her. The traffic stop happened at approximately 8:19 p.m. Wednesday after a Pharr police officer on patrol saw a red Nissan Sentra with a defective brake lamp traveling south on Veterans Road near Thomas Road.
The officer conducted a traffic stop on the vehicle and noticed that Perez, who was born in 1981, was a Mexican National with no authorization to be in the United States, according to the complaint.
That document said Perez granted the officer consent to search the Nissan Sentra.
“The officer opened the trunk of the Sentra and immediately noticed a strong acidic odor emitting from the trunk where a transmission was being stored,” the complaint said.
The officer asked Perez if she would follow him to the Pharr Port of Entry for a more thorough search of the Sentra and transmission by him and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers, and she agreed, according to the complaint.
Once there, the complaint said Pharr police and CBP drug-sniffing dogs alerted to the trunk. A further inspection revealed two packages wrapped in red tape and a clear plastic bag.
“The three packages contained blue, round pills with a stamped ‘M’ inside the box,” the complaint stated.
Drug Enforcement Administration agents on scene suspected the pills were fentanyl and transported Perez to the DEA McAllen District Office for questioning where Perez admitted she was instructed to pick up the transmission and transport it back to her residence, according to the complaint.
That document said Perez told agents the transmission contained an illegal substance, but that she didn’t know what it was. She also said she expected to be paid $300 and admitted that she had previously been paid that amount for transporting narcotics during other instances, according to the complaint.
“Agents have recently seized a large amount of pills with the same color, shape, stamped logo and packaging in the month of September 2022 which were tested by the DEA laboratory and found to contain fentanyl,” the complaint stated.
Perez made her first appearance Thursday in McAllen federal court where U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Scott Hacker ordered her temporarily held without bond pending further court proceedings, court records indicate.
