A federal inmate has been supervising Minnesota meth trafficking from behind bars, according to criminal charges filed Tuesday against two men arrested during an undercover operation at a Brooklyn Park Applebee's this week.

According to charges, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent negotiated with the inmate, whose name has not yet been disclosed, to buy 20 pounds of meth for $120,000.

Agents arrested Ricky William Mariano and Toribio Ornelas Vasquez on Monday after the first agent met the two men for a purported deal in the restaurant's parking lot, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday charging the men with conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. The charges described a tip from late last year that the inmate had been orchestrating meth trafficking in Minnesota "and elsewhere."

According to the complaint, Mariano told investigators that he knew the inmate from a previous prison stint and that the inmate asked him to take Vasquez to pick up cash. Vasquez later admitted to driving the methamphetamine from California to Minnesota.

Also Tuesday, federal prosecutors charged two more men in the latest of a series of arrests that began with the seizure of more than 150 pounds of methamphetamine being driven from Phoenix to Minnesota last week.

The new charges provide the first details of the origin of an alleged conspiracy whose roots extend to the notorious Sinaloa cartel in Mexico. Jonathan Gonzalez and Wilber Quintero Rodriguez brought to six the number of people charged since authorities in Oklahoma last week seized 151.8 pounds of meth from a driver who agreed to lead investigators to his customers in the Twin Cities.

According to a DEA agent's affidavit, Gonzalez later told agents that he had been taking orders from a cousin being supervised by "Marro," a man in Mexico whom Gonzalez said worked for the Sinaloa cartel. Gonzalez and Rodriguez were arrested shortly after picking up what they thought was a 40-pound meth shipment in a Minneapolis Target parking lot.

A man arrested under similar circumstances in St. Paul that day also described working for a Mexico-based man named "Marro." On Friday, Gonzalez told agents after his arrest that he had been hauling about 100 pounds of methamphetamine in recent months for "Marro," and Rodriguez, a relative, drove him to the Target because he did not have a driver's license.