BLOOMINGTON — A drug smuggling operation with tentacles reaching from central California to the Twin Cities was disrupted this week with the filing of federal charges against more than a dozen suspects, following a large-scale drug raid in Bloomington.

Federal agents followed drug suspects from Illinois to Sacramento, Calif., where cocaine and marijuana were picked up and delivered to a Cicero man accused of being the ringleader of a major drug distribution operation in the Bloomington-Normal area, said federal authorities. Fourteen suspects were in custody Wednesday and two others have been charged but not yet arrested, authorities said.

On Wednesday, those taken into custody during five hours of early morning raids the day before, appeared in federal district court in Peoria where they were formally charged. The drug sweep has been dubbed “Operation Prairie Eagle.”

“It’s been a good couple of days for law enforcement and it’s been a good couple of days for the community,” said U.S. Attorney James Lewis, U.S. attorney for the Central District in Peoria.

Details of the investigation that started with a street crimes unit in Peoria in August are laid out in more 70 pages of affidavits filed in federal court.