SAN DIEGO -- A three-year, undercover investigation has brought down a nationwide drug trafficking network that funneled illegal narcotics through San Diego County to cities across the country, officials said Thursday.

Dubbed "Operation Funk 49," the investigation has resulted in a total of more than 200 arrests, including almost 40 people arrested in Atlanta on Thursday, and the seizure of $25 million, 1,500 kilograms of cocaine and more than 600 pounds of methamphetamine, officials said.

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said at a Thursday morning news conference that the drug trafficking ring moved "large quantities" of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin from Mexico, through San Diego County, and into other cities, including Riverside, San Francisco, New York, Detroit and Atlanta.

"This operation has dismantled a nationwide drug trafficking operation, and San Diego was ground zero," Dumanis said.

The drugs seized during the investigation included 150 pounds of cocaine from a vehicle stopped Nov. 2, 2006, on Interstate 5 near Las Pulgas Road as a Tijuana couple attempted to transport it from Chula Vista to San Jose, prosecutors said.

Also seized were more than 190 pounds of cocaine in a vehicle stopped Sept. 3, 2005, in Perris as suspects were driving it from a stash house in Mission Valley to the Riverside County area, prosecutors said.

The Tijuana couple already have been prosecuted, with the wife, Julia Fuentes, being sentenced to two years in state prison, said Deputy District Attorney Chris Lindberg of the district attorney's office's narcotics unit.

Lindberg said Fuentes' husband, Francisco Javier Fuentes, was prosecuted in federal court, where court records say he pleaded guilty in June, subject to the approval of a U.S. District Court judge at a hearing next week.

The suspects who were driving the drugs seized in Perris have not yet been arrested.

Lindberg said prosecutors would have been required to provide to defense attorneys information about the investigation if the suspects had been charged at the time the drugs were seized, but authorities were not ready to disclose that information then.

As a result, the suspects were questioned and released at that time, but they now face arrest and prosecution.

Lindberg declined to identify those suspects.

Ralph Partridge, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's San Diego office, said "Operation Funk 49" began in 2004 with one phone call to his agency and grew into a large investigation involving federal and local law enforcement agencies.

The local agencies that assisted in the investigation included the Escondido, National City and Chula Vista police departments and the district attorney's office, Partridge said.

A "low-level" drug dealer in San Diego reported a rival drug dealer to federal agents, starting the investigation that became "Operation Funk 49," said Deputy District Attorney Damon Mosler, chief of the district attorney's narcotics unit.

The operation was named for a James Gang song that includes the lyrics "Out all night, sleep all day, I know what you're doin'," Lindberg said; agents put in long hours and knew what the alleged drug traffickers were doing during the investigation, he added.

The determination of law enforcement officers in San Diego County and across the country "broke a pipeline of drug smuggling here in San Diego and across the United States," Partridge said.

Mosler said authorities are seeing the prices of drugs increase, indicating that fewer drugs are available. Operation Funk 49 will have a "lasting impact," Mosler said.

Contact staff writer Scott Marshall at (760) 631-6623 or smarshall@nctimes.com.