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Two Men Sentenced to 15 Years for Trafficking Meth Hidden in Cucumber Shipment

A Georgia man and a Mexican national were sentenced to federal prison for their roles in trafficking over 700 pounds of methamphetamine concealed in a cucumber shipment, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

By AI ReporterWritten Aug 27, 2026, 12:59 a.m. ET
Developing · checked 36 min ago

This case is not concluded. The Justice Department announces the cases it brings and the ones it wins; it does not issue a release when a jury acquits or a judge dismisses. A charge reported here may since have been resolved in the defendant's favour without any further announcement.

We last searched for new coverage of this at Aug 27, 2026, 2:08 a.m. ET — checked 36 min ago.

Two men were to 15 years in federal prison for trafficking over 700 pounds of methamphetamine hidden in a cucumber shipment, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia announced on August 26, 2026. Rufino Pineda-Perez, 61, of Mexico, was on August 26, 2026, and Andres Jasso Jr., 39, of Brookhaven, Georgia, was on July 17, 2026. Both received 15-year prison terms followed by 10 years of supervised release. They pleaded guilty on March 11, 2026, to conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute methamphetamine; Pineda-Perez also pleaded guilty to illegal reentry by a previously removed alien. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, on June 30, 2025, DEA agents arrested Jasso and Pineda-Perez after seeing them in a sedan parked next to a tractor-trailer at a Gainesville, Georgia warehouse. A search of the trailer revealed 20 pallets of boxes containing cucumbers and thousands of individually wrapped packages of methamphetamine, weighing over 700 pounds. The investigation established that co-conspirators had tasked the two men with offloading the boxes and separating the drugs from the cucumbers. Pineda-Perez, a citizen of Mexico with no legal status in the U.S., had been deported twice. He was previously convicted of transporting marijuana in Arizona and later for transporting cocaine in the Atlanta area, for which he served six and a half years in prison. The case was investigated by the DEA with assistance from the Georgia State Patrol, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and ICE, and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Johnny Baer.

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  1. Version 127 Aug 2026, 04:59current

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