Mead-area couple owns home with drug tunnel

A couple who owns a home in northern Spokane County also owns the Lynden, Wash., house where a drug-smuggling tunnel connecting the United States to Canada was found earlier this week.

Authorities confirmed the identity of the owners Friday.

Three Canadian men were arrested in connection with the case. The elaborate 360-foot tunnel, reinforced with 2-by-6 wooden supports and rebar, stretched from a metal hut in British Columbia and ended underneath the living room of the home in Lynden.

The house is owned by Raman L. and Kusum B. Patel, according to the Whatcom County Assessor’s Web site. The Spokane County Assessor’s Web site indicates the same couple purchased a home at 5022 E. Lane Park in the Mead area in July 2003. Neighbors said that the Patels reside at the home.

A federal search warrant was served at the Mead house on Thursday, said Jeff Eig, a spokesman for the Seattle bureau of the Drug Enforcement Administration. No arrests were made following the search.

Eig said the investigation into the drug-trafficking tunnel and the individuals involved continues, but he would not say whether the Patels were under investigation.

Francis Devandra Raj, 30, Timothy Woo, 34, and Jonathan Valenzuela, 27, all of Surrey, B.C., were each charged Thursday in U.S. District Court in Seattle with conspiracy to distribute marijuana and conspiracy to import marijuana, Eig said.

Although 33 tunnels have been found at the southern border of the United States, this is the first one discovered between Canada and the United States, officials said.

Officials said construction of the tunnel began more than a year ago and was finished earlier this month. On July 2, DEA agents entered the Lynden home using a delayed search warrant to examine the tunnel.

A U.S. District Court judge authorized the installation of cameras and listening devices in the home to monitor activities. During that time, law enforcement officials said they observed Raj, Woo and Valenzuela make multiple trips through the tunnel carrying large hockey bags or garbage bags.

On one occasion, a car loaded with 93 pounds of marijuana was delivered to a woman with a small child at a mall. The Post Falls woman was arrested in Ellensburg. Her name has not been released.

“This tunnel was ambitious, sophisticated and an example of the lengths individuals and criminal organizations will go to for illegal profits,” Inspector Pat Fogarty, of the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit in British Columbia, said in a press release. “Thanks to an intelligence-led investigation and a coordinated approach between Canadian and U.S. agencies it has been shut down.”