They told their parents around February that a new boy was joining their games on this quiet cul-du-sac of neat, brand-new homes and had started attending their school.

What neighbors didn't know, but what federal authorities now allege, is that this family -- husband, wife and young son -- was hired in Mexico, given a car and directions to Joliet and paid to live there as part of an elaborate ploy to disguise the two-story home's true purpose. It was to serve as a stash house for a drug ring that allegedly raked in about $10 million a year selling cocaine, most recently under the leadership of a man named "Panda."

Federal agents and local police raided the four-bedroom Joliet home in June, finding $1.4 million in cash in vacuum-sealed baggies in the attic and, inside a black Ford pickup in the garage, 54 kilograms of cocaine, according to recently unsealed court documents. It was part of a larger bust in which 17 people were arrested and accused of using stash houses across the southwest suburbs in Bolingbrook, Hickory Hills, Joliet, Oak Lawn and Plainfield.

Federal authorities say the suburbs now rival Chicago when comparing the amount of drugs imported to the area by Mexican cartels. The most significant drug conspiracy in Chicago history, detailed last month and traced back to Mexico's most notorious drug kingpins, operated out of stash houses dotted all over bucolic suburban neighborhoods.

"Oh my God," said Tonya Butler, who lives down the street from the Joliet home. "I never would've suspected it. I thought this was a good working-class neighborhood. We all get up in the morning. We all go to work."

"It was kind of strange because we didn't see anybody going to work," said another neighbor, who said his son went to school with the family's son.

Four air mattresses and an empty tequila bottle lay in one of the upstairs bedrooms, said a person who was inside the house after the raid but did not want to be identified. A child's crayon scribbles were on the wall of a second bedroom.

The father, Jorge Guadalupe Ayala-German, was not charged as part of the narcotics conspiracy but is charged with maintaining a house where drugs were sold. Authorities say he knew about the cocaine trade being plied from the home, and court papers allege he provided "an innocent facade for the illegal activity."

Ayala-German told agents that he was living in Michoacan, Mexico, when a person he knew only as "Guadalupe One" offered him a job in Joliet.

He was given a car and promised $300 a week along with a $35,000 payoff when he completed his illegal house-sitting assignment in December, according to court documents. His job, he told agents, was to keep up appearances: buying groceries, maintaining the house and sometimes cooking meals for a narcotics distributor who neighbors thought was Ayala-German's brother.

Law-enforcement officials say the ruse is not new. In most cases, people are hired to provide security for the houses, but here dealers hoped to fly under the radar "just by appearing to live an ordinary existence," said Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Will Taylor.

"When people see the brazen, street-corner drug trade or continuous traffic at all hours, most people recognize right away that this is a drug house," Joliet Police Chief Fred Hayes said. "Often, those are very low-level operators. On the wholesale level, you don't see that. Rarely do people recognize that their neighbors are involved in these larger distribution rings because they do everything they can to give the appearance of just being normal neighbors."

At a Bolingbrook ranch home -- located less than a block from a sign reading "Drug-free School Zone" -- an astounding 2,000 kilos of cocaine, worth more than $50 million, were distributed by the same ring that operated from the Joliet house over six weeks in summer 2007, according to drug ledgers detailed in court documents. Separately, in Romeoville, Plainfield and elsewhere, the stash houses that moved several tons of drugs a month in the largest drug conspiracy in Chicago history weren't sleazy shacks but well-manicured single-family dwellings.

Neighbors said they were completely unaware.

The suburbs, particularly the Interstate Highway 55 corridor that includes Bolingbrook and Plainfield, offer traffickers the same advantages afforded legitimate businesses: easy access to highways and warehouses while giving them a better chance of blending in, law-enforcement officials say. Police-enforcement efforts have followed their path.

Gary Hartwig, special agent in charge of investigations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Chicago, said the bulk of his agency's probes into large-scale drug trafficking shifted from Chicago to the suburbs about three years ago.

"It's tough to take a 53-foot trailer into downtown Chicago and offload three- or four-thousand-pound bulks of marijuana or cocaine," Hartwig said. "Obviously, a suburban environment lends itself better to commercial traffic."

Police officials also say tougher enforcement in Chicago has pushed drug trafficking to the suburbs. An alleged drug dealer who ran an East Garfield Park drug spot complained last year about how hard it is to work in the city, according to charging documents filed this year.

"All these [expletive], if they ain't wearing a wire ... they got a [expletive] up the street with a microphone," said the alleged dealer, whose comments ironically were recorded by an undercover officer.

The suburbs have traditionally been a popular spot for buyers and sellers to meet. Drug charges involving cocaine sales in the last year include the sale of 20 kilograms hidden inside two duffel bags at a gas station in Monee; the sale of 2 kilos hidden inside a red-and-white cooler outside a Calumet City mall's Macy's; and, on a smaller scale, a buyer being handed 130 grams tucked inside a white Dunkin' Donuts coffee cup outside a Melrose Park hot dog stand.

Police Chief Thomas Weitzel of Riverside learned a few weeks ago that a young man from his town was part of the largest drug conspiracy in Chicago history, which stashed millions of dollars worth of drugs in the suburb.

Weitzel wasn't surprised, but he worries that, as the quantity of drugs and illicit money increases, traffickers will be quicker to use violence to protect their investment from authorities or rival criminals.

"That's my fear, something that spills out on the streets and in the neighborhoods," he said.

sschmadeke@tribune.com

oavila@tribune.com