(File Photo of a Gavel)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) U.S. Attorney Troy Rivetti announced yesterday that a citizen of the Dominican Republic who entered the United States illegally has been sentenced in federal court to eight years of imprisonment, to be followed by four years of federal supervised release. Forty-six-year-old Santos Castro-Mota was sentenced and according to information presented to the Court, a joint investigation by federal, state, and local law enforcement operating under the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) program in Beaver County determined that Aliquippa drug trafficker Kijana Lowe frequently communicated with Castro-Mota while Castro-Mota was serving a five-to-ten year sentence at State Correctional Institution Phoenix in Collegeville, Pennsylvania on a drug trafficking conviction. After the completion of his sentence, Castro-Mota will be deported from the United States. Recordings of calls between Lowe and Castro-Mota revealed that Lowe would order kilogram
quantities of cocaine from Castro-Mota, with the defendants referring to a kilogram of cocaine as a “white car.” After Castro-Mota negotiated the sale with Lowe, Castro-Mota would then direct a co-defendant, who Castro-Mota referred to as “the mechanic,” to deliver the controlled substances to Lowe. The investigation established that Lowe would then supply the drugs to another co-defendant, Anthony Tusweet Smith Jr., who would subsequently sell them to end users. In November of 2021, investigators learned that an in-person delivery of kilogram quantities of cocaine was planned to Lowe in the Western District of Pennsylvania, and, during a surveillance
operation, observed Lowe accept a suitcase outside of a motel in Coraopolis. Law enforcement detained the individuals that were involved and executed search warrants on the suitcase, a motel room, and the vehicle of Lowe. The suitcase contained nearly 10 kilograms of cocaine, while the vehicle of Lowe contained over $280,000 that was to be used to purchase the seized cocaine. In conjunction with the
interdiction, law enforcement obtained search warrants for cell phones found in the possession of Lowe and a co-defendant (“the mechanic”), with digital extractions from these devices revealing numerous communications and photographs between the conspirators regarding their drug trafficking activity, in addition to Castro-Mota’s involvement in the conspiracy.