WASHINGTON — Federal agents have arrested 140 people and searched scores of sites from coast to coast as they dismantled a nationwide ring allegedly supplying pseudoephedrine to clandestine labs that turned it into methamphetamine.
The distribution ring was led by a group of 10 people, who shipped their profits to the Middle East, Drug Enforcement Administration officials said Tuesday.
Agents arrested eight of those 10, including Hassan Zaghmot of Denver. DEA officials, who requested anonymity, said one of the 10 was out of the country and the other may have fled after the latest round of arrests began last Friday with Zaghmot's arrest after a federal grand juror allegedly tipped him off about the sealed indictment against him.
The federal grand juror, Mark J. Hinckley, 37, of Evergreen, Colo., was arrested Monday night in Denver on charges that he told Zaghmot last Thursday that the grand jury had returned a sealed indictment against him.
"This was the first time that U.S. law enforcement has been able to connect a major group of pseudoephedrine distributors directly to U.S.-based, Mexican-controlled methamphetamine laboratory operators," said Joe Keefe, chief of DEA's special operations division. These traffickers were charged with intent to manufacturer methamphetamine; previously, pseudoephedrine traffickers had largely faced only civil penalties for diversion of regulated substances, Keefe said.
Attorney General Janet Reno told a news conference, "This operation should send a message to anyone involved in methamphetamine production and distribution that we are continuing the fight in every way we know how, so that this problem won't be treating communities of America as crack did in the 1980s."
Reno and DEA Administrator Donnie Marshall announced that Operation Mountain Express, begun in December 1999, had seized $8 million in cash, 10 metric tons of pseudoephedrine, capable of producing 18,000 pounds of methamphetamine, 83 pounds of finished methamphetamine, two pseudoephedrine extraction laboratories, one methamphetamine laboratory and 136 pounds of processing chemicals.
Some 100 of the arrests came over the course of the investigation; another 40 were made since last Friday. Agents searched 66 locations and used civil and administrative enforcement actions to close down 18 pseudoephedrine companies, most controlled by the commission.
In April, agents seized 1,200 pounds of pseudoephedrine and several million dollars in cash and arrested 14 couriers, which officials said sent a shock wave through the organization. Using informants, electronic surveillance and undercover agents, the investigators learned that the commission called an emergency meeting May 18 in Kissimmee, Fla.
From informants at the meeting, agents learned that the commissioners had decided to use only white Americans as couriers to avoid law enforcement suspicions, to shift their use of unwitting commercial courier companies regularly for fear some would develop links with law enforcement and to assemble money and devise plans for quick escapes from this country if there were further raids.
DEA officials said the commission set prices, determined the methods of transportation, sent profits to Israel, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia and set up front companies to buy and ship pseudoephedrine tablets to methamphetamine laboratories in southern California.
Pseudoephedrine tablets are imported for legal use in over-the-counter cold and allergy remedies.
DEA officials it costs $450 to make a pound of tablets for legitimate use, but the traffickers would buy the tablets from legitimate importers for $1,500 a pound, then ship them through a series of front companies to the West Coast and sell them to clandestine methamphetamine labs for $4,000 a pound. One pound of tablets produces roughly a pound of methamphetamine, which is sold for $14,000 to $15,000 a pound in the Midwest.
Over the weekend, agents closed down Avance Pharmaceuticals in Ronconkoma, N.Y., for its alleged involvement in this trafficking.
Officials said that over the course of the investigation there were arrests, searches or civil or administrative enforcement actions in: Buffalo, N.Y.; New York; Ronconkoma, N.Y.; Camden and Newark, N.J.; Philadelphia; Washington; Richmond, Va.; Greensboro, N.C.; Detroit; Pittsburgh; Chicago; Cleveland; Kansas City, Mo.; St. Louis; Columbus, Ohio; Nashville; Atlanta; Tampa, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Miami, Fla.; New Orleans; Baton Rouge, La.; Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Okla.; Denver; Las Vegas and Reno, Nev.; Seattle; Portland, Ore.; Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Fresno, Riverside and Los Angeles, Calif.