Michael John Cefola had been driving for days, transporting cargo in his vehicle all the way from California. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or maybe it was just carelessness. But Cefola couldn't keep his blue Chevy four-door from swerving in and out of the lane on a Gainesville highway.
A police officer noticed this and pulled Cefola over. Turns out, the officer happened to be a member of the Gainesville-Alachua County Drug Task Force.
Also, turns out Cefola was allegedly transporting about 90 pounds of pot worth around $356,000 on the streets.
Cefola, 51, who lives in Fort Lauderdale and is unemployed, admitted to police that he had been paid $15,000 to transport the pot from California.
He was allegedly driving the cargo down to our neck of the woods when his quest hit a snag up in Gainesville.
The officer, the report says, was patrolling the I-75 corridor in a clearly marked patrol vehicle when he spotted Cefola's car swerving back and forth around 7:45 Tuesday night.
It was Cefola's driving that forced the officer to fire up the lights.
Officer B.K. Jones' intent was to pull Cefola over for an infraction after failing to maintain in a single lane while in traffic. But Cefola's suspicious behavior caught officer Jones' attention. Something was up, the officer knew. So he asked Cefola permission to search the Chevy. Cefola refused consent.
But this just wasn't Cefola's night.
Officer Jones, being of the County Drug Task Force, also happened to have with him Shiloh, a drug-sniffing K9.
Shiloh is a single-purpose Labrador retriever trained solely for drug detection. And so, Shiloh did his thing and apparently located the pot with his insanely acute sense of smell.
Shiloh alerted Jones of the drugs, which gave the officer probable cause to search the Chevy. The report says the search produced about 89.5 pounds of high-grade cannabis.
Cefola was arrested and charged with marijuana trafficking in excess of 25 pounds or 300 plants or more.
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