After 15 years, Bay Area meth trafficking fugitive’s arrest warrant is mysteriously dismissed

Without explanation, the U.S. Attorney's office dismissed the arrest warrant and indictment for a suspected methamphetamine dealer who'd been listed as a "Most Wanted" fugitive for 15 years.

SAN FRANCISCO — Without explanation, the U.S. Attorney’s office dismissed the arrest warrant and indictment for a suspected methamphetamine dealer who’d been listed as a “Most Wanted” fugitive for 15 years.

Gabriel Tapia-Lemus, of Modesto, was connected to a large meth trafficking

conspiracy case based in Northern California. He was indicted in 2004, along with four others, and believed to be a supplier a Sonoma County middleman meth dealer named Robert Lott.

At the time of the indictment, the Drug Enforcement Administration made attempts to arrest Tapia-Lemus, conducting searches of his Modesto home several times. When they failed to locate him, the feds seized around $55,000 from his bank account, along with several Rolex watches and other valuables believed to be bought with drug trafficking proceeds, according to court records.

Tapia-Lemus’ warrant was dismissed on May 21, at the request of federal prosecutors. No explanation was offered. At the time of this writing, Tapia-Lemus was still listed on the DEA’s website as a “Most Wanted” fugitive, along with a picture, his alias “Gabriel Lemus Roberto Lucio,” and this description: “Frequents California. Has a thick moustache.”

Tapia-Lemus’ criminal history includes a mid-1990s arrest in Stanislaus County where he was reportedly found with 10 pounds of marijuana, deported to Mexico after his conviction, and then snuck back into California.

He surfaced as a suspect in the 2004 conspiracy case while the DEA was wiretapping several suspected meth traffickers’ phones, including Lott’s. DEA agents also suspected that Tapia-Lemus was using a phone to conduct drug deals that listed Lott as the subscriber.

At the time, authorities believed Lott was buying meth for resale from Tapia-Lemus, as well as a sergeant-at-arms of the Vallejo Hells Angels. When authorities interviewed Tapia-Lemus’ wife for the investigation, she claimed her husband was a construction worker but said she didn’t know if he was involved in drug sales, according to court records.

In 2007, Lott was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in federal prison, according to court records.

During the wiretap operation, Lott became a suspect in the October 2004 murder of Darrell Wayne Grokett — whose name is also listed as “Darryl Grockett” — an Aryan Brotherhood member who was violently extorting Lott at the time.

In 2008, a grand jury indicted Lott on charges of murder and conspiring with members of the Sinaloa Cartel and Family Affiliated Irish Mafia. Prosecutors used a legal theory that says co-conspirators in a drug ring can be held responsible for homicides they didn’t personally commit, if the homicides furthered the ring’s interests.

But the case against Lott turned out to be deeply flawed; it was dismissed due to lack of evidence within months. From 2013-16, two other men, Coby Phillips and Jose Vega-Robles, went to trial on charges of murdering Grokett, where they were convicted and sentenced to life. During Phillips’ trial, his attorney failed to convinced jurors that Lott and his neighbor were the real killers.

Oddly enough, this is the third time the federal government has dismissed an arrest warrant against a longtime fugitive in a meth case involving this bunch. In 2017, the U.S. Attorneys office quashed warrants for Saul Vega-Robles, Jose Vega-Robles’ younger brother, as well as an allegedly high-ranking Sinaloa Cartel member named Jesus “Mundo” Edmundo Carrazco-Chavez, who’d both spent more than a decade on the lam.

Similarly, no explanation was offered for the move. Like Tapia-Lemus, Saul Vega-Robles had been listed as a DEA “Most Wanted” fugitive at the time of his dismissal.

U.S. Attorney spokesman Abraham Simmons said there was no “publicly available” information to explain why Tapia-Lemus’ warrant was dismissed. Warrants can be dismissed when a defendant dies, when witnesses become unavailable, or a multitude of other reasons.