Seven indicted for drug trafficking in South Lake Tahoe during ‘Operation Bear Trap’

A federal grand jury has indicted six South Lake Tahoe residents and one Sacramento resident in connection with a drug trafficking ring, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Friday.

Prosecutors say the seven worked together from August 2020 to May of this year, according to court documents, in an intertwined effort to sell methamphetamine and heroin around South Lake Tahoe. The indictments stem from an operation that started in 2020 — dubbed Operation Bear Trap — to address the problem of meth distribution in the resort area.

The defendants allegedly sold drugs to multiple informants over the two-year operation. The investigation into the drug ring found that some of the illicit supply was coming from Sacramento.

Defendants Wendy Labuda, 64; Epifanio Ramirez, 47; Sarah Anderson, 32; Fabian Gomez, 33; and Joaleen Rogers, 53, of South Lake Tahoe; and William Owen, 47, of Sacramento were all charged in one indictment apiece, while Robert Choate, 38, of South Lake Tahoe was charged in a separate indictment.

Thirty-six individuals have been arrested via Operation Bear Trap on both state and federal drug and firearms trafficking charges so far, U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert’s office said in a news release. Police have also seized multiple drugs and firearms, including ghost guns, firearms manufactured without serial numbers.

The investigation was a combined effort between the FBI, the South Lake Tahoe Police Department, the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office, the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office in Nevada, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office.

The collaboration comes from the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces program run by the U.S. Department of Justice.

This story was originally published July 8, 2022 at 3:58 PM.