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Fort Lee detectives find 2 kilos of cocaine, $9,000 cash, in car’s secret compartments

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Fort Lee police detectives seized two kilos of cocaine worth about $60,000 on the street and $9,000 in cash — both hidden in electronically-controlled, secret vehicle compartments — and arrested three men after the driver made a U-turn on Route 4.

Photo Credit: Cliffview Pilot File Photo

Detectives T.J. Cullen and Cory Horton were doing a routine hotel/motel check yesterday afternoon when they began following an Acura TL with tinted windows after it stopped at the Best Western Hotel off the highway, backed into a parking space and then left.

After making the U-turn, the driver “swerved off an exit ramp to I-95 north” and continued going on Route 4, Capt. Thomas Ottina said this afternoon.

Cullen stopped the car near the exit to Center Avenue. After getting the driver’s consent to search the vehicle, he and Horton and found the secret compartment stuffed with two bundles of cash, Ottina said.

The men were taken into custody and the car brought to headquarters, where a drug-sniffing dog alerted the detectives to narcotics, Ottina said.

They then got search warrant and found another hidden compartment – this one under the dashboard — that contained the cocaine, the captain said.

All three men were being held on $100,000 bail each in the Bergen County Jail, charged with possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute the drug and money laundering.

They were identified as (pictured, above, left to right):

Diego Rodriguez, 43, Norton, MA
Francis Lanfranco, 34, of Troutman Street, Brooklyn
Louis Sosa-Rodriguez, 44, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

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