The Mega Merged Drug Busts Thread

High school coach arrested for selling drugs

Indianapolis, July 15 - Thirty-three-year-old Steve Fagan, an assistant girls basketball coach at Cathedral High School, was arrested this week by Greenwood Police for selling drugs while wearing a Cathedral school shirt.

Police Captain David Payne says, "Officers contacted him, he agreed to meet with them down here. They met and he was arrested."

The Indianapolis man was arrested for trying to sell cocaine and marijuana in a sting at the Greenwood Park Mall.

Police say that Fagan was carrying only a small of amount of drugs that they believe he regularly deals outside of the mall.

Fagan has coached at Cathedral for the last three years, assistant coach in girls softball and then in the girls' basketball program.

Administrators at the private Catholic school say that while Fagan isn't a staff member and has a limited role at the school, he did pass the required criminal background checks.

"We're all so saddened and shocked because Mr. Fagan is a dedicated coach," says Principal Dave Worland, "and by his job performance we saw, he was reccommended to continue because of what we knew."

Held at the Johnson County Jail charged on felony and misdemeanor drug counts, the coach declined an interview.

While police continue to look into Fagan's alleged drug ties in Greenwood, his employer is investigating whether any drugs were sold to students.


http://www.wthr.com/Global/story.asp?S=2045563&nav=9TaiOpuP

Bust finds 2,000 immature marijuana plants

Bust finds 2,000 immature marijuana plants

Thursday, July 15, 2004


By Erin Musgrave/Staff Writer

Law enforcement officials seized over 2,000 marijuana plants near the Pacheco Creek Reservoir Tuesday, arresting the man living in and cultivating the gardens that eventually could have produce several million dollars of street-value marijuana.

Augustine Castillo, 45, was arrested for felony marijuana cultivation when 10 San Benito County Sheriff’s Department special agents entered the area in between Pacheco Creek and the Pacheco Creek drainage, about a quarter of a mile west of Lover’s Lane at 1 p.m., said agent David Pilkington of the Unified Narcotics Enforcement Team.

The 2,017 plants were between one and three feet tall and occupied three separate gardens - the largest about 70 yards by 30 yards and the others slightly smaller, Pilkington said.

Castillo had a small camp site located inside the smallest garden, he said.

“He had a sleeping bag and was camping out. He was guarding it and tending it,” Pilkington said. “He was totally compliant, was not armed and gave up with no resistance.”

Castillo had no prior narcotics arrests, but was arrested for a misdemeanor driving under the influence charge in 2003 and a drunk in public charge in 2001, according to San Benito County Jail officials.

Castillo is incarcerated at the jail in lieu of $50,000 bail.

Agents discovered the cache of plants about a month ago when someone trying to camp in the area had called sheriff’s deputies and advised them they had been shot at while trying to find a place to camp, Pilkington said.

“The deputies stumbled upon the garden and took it over to us,” he said. “We followed up yesterday... There are certain reasons why we waited so long that I can’t go into because they’re part of the investigation.”

Agents seized the crop and booked it into evidence at the Hollister Police Department.

The plants will be destroyed upon a court order after the case is settled through the District Attorney’s Office, Pilkington said.

“There’s different ways to dispose of it,” he said. “Burn it, bury it - it depends.”


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Pharmacy helps bust marijuana grower

Pharmacy Employees Aid In Drug Arrest


A sting operation in Dripping Springs was aiding with the help of some very shrewd residents.

Police are crediting the employees of a small town pharmacy for nabbing a drug suspect.

One woman told News 36 that she just had a gut feeling that something was wrong, and she proved to be right.

Folks at Dripping Springs Pharmacy knew something wasn't right with one of their frequent customers.

"I'm usually the one who helps him when he comes in, and I've always been real suspicious about him because when we would ask him a personal question, your name or anything, he would get real agitated," Holly Maynard with the Dripping Springs Pharmacy said.

For the past six months, the man's been using the store's UPS service to ship boxes of what he said were microphones.

"He wasn't very smart because he didn't tape the box too well, and she looked inside and saw there were vials of marijuana," Maynard said.

But the challenge for authorities was how to catch a suspect who had used at least six different names, fake ID's and credit cards to do his business.

"Mission one was to find out who this guy was, and that was difficult to do. I don't know if we would have been able to do it, had he not come back to the store to claim his box," Sgt. Chase Stapp with the Hays County Narcotics Task Force said.

"So I called him back and said our UPS system was down, and if he wanted it out today then he would have to come get it, and he said he was on his way. He came up, and we made a package up real quick to look like his, and he walked in. All I had to do was give a signal to Lynn, and they came and got him," Maynard said.

Thirty-seven-year-old Thomas Lee Spoonemore had an even bigger surprise awaiting authorities back at his Dripping Springs home.

"We found a fairly good size double-wide mobile home that he was living in and using to grow marijuana. He had converted over half the mobile home to his grow operations living in a small part of it," Stapp said.

The stash of six gallon-sized bags of marijuana, roughly 55 plants, six fake ID's and a video about how to make them. All of it was valued at more than $30,000.

The highly potent strain of pot sells for about $40 a gram on the street. Spoonemore is charged with delivery and possession of marijuana and with tampering and forgery of a government document for all those fake ID's.





Link

Man allegedly leaves heroin in rental car

Man allegedly leaves heroin in rental car

July 19/04

A man who returned a rental car allegedly forgot to take along 88 bags of heroin he had left in the car . Employees of an Enterprise Rent-A-Car agency called police and reported finding the drugs hidden under a layer of napkins in the car’s console, authorities said.

Using information found in the wallet the man also left behind, Detective Daniel Baranoski of nearby Middletown contacted Robert Laguerre, posing as someone who had found the heroin, and told him he wanted to return the drugs for a reward, authorities said.

Baranoski set up a meeting with Laguerre at a mall in this Philadelphia suburb, and Laguerre was arrested when he arrived, police said. ap

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Re: Man allegedly leaves heroin in rental car

^^^^^^


This guy sounds like a really big jackass. I can see leaving your wallet but 88 bags of dope! He deserves to get arrested.

^^ Tell me about it! He was prolly too stoned to realize until it was too late.

:D

$10M 'Ecstasy House' looked like normal home

$10M 'Ecstasy House' looked like normal home

CURTIS RUSH
STAFF REPORTER THESTAR.COM

Nothing looked out of place at the two-storey house at 412 Manhattan Dr. in Markham.
Flowers planted outside gave the home a lived-in look and the lawn was manicured.

But nothing was normal about this house.

When a passing resident notified the fire department of an unusual amount of smoke coming from the chimney on Saturday, firefighters found $10 million worth of industrial chemicals used to make drugs such as ecstasy.

Reports say this was the biggest ecstasy bust in North America.

Today police are looking for an unknown number of suspects now that the house, in the 16th Avenue and McCowan Rd. area, is officially a crime scene with Health Canada officials there to decontaminate it. Detectives can't step foot inside until all of the hazardous toxins are removed.

Even the residents at the two adjoining houses have been evacuated.

Reports are the house was purchased a few weeks ago for up to $400,000 in cash.

Police are trying to find the homeowners.

It may take up to a week to clear the home of the chemicals so an investigation can continue.

As with any chemical, you have to treat it with care or there could be a major explosion," said Sergeant Joanne Waite of York Region police. "These industrial-grade chemicals are very highly flammable."

Investigators found various equipment and chemicals used to make the drug ecstasy.

Substantial amounts of the chemicals, which include ethanol and dextromethorphan, were also found scattered within the house, police said.

This isn't the first time York police have made a major ecstasy drug bust.

Four years ago this month, York Region police seized millions of dollars worth of the chemicals used to produce ecstasy from a Markham home.

It was considered to be the largest illicit-drug laboratory bust in Canadian history.

But Waite says while ecstasy is a common illicit drug in York Region, it's unusual to find drug labs and manufacturing operations in the region.

"We haven't come across too many labs in York Region recently," Waite said.

"So this is a surprise."

York Region is becoming a burgeoning area for marijuana grow houses and ecstasy labs. But officials say ecstasy labs are even harder to detect because the homes don't have to be set up with vast amounts of hydroponic equipment.

Police say that the suspects are becoming more sophisticated in their operations, even going as far as to hire out families with children to live in the houses so as not to tip off the public.

However, police say that the public should be aware of the unusual aspects of smoke coming from the chimney in the summertime and to notice if there is a lot of traffic, especially cargo vans, coming in and leaving at all hours.

Link

Re: $10M 'Ecstasy House' looked like normal home

Edge80 said:

$10M 'Ecstasy House' looked like normal home

Click to expand...

Really, why on earth didn't they have a sign outside "E lab Inside" huh ?

8(

2 face bouquet of drug charges

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0407180049jul18,1,3358398.story


chicagotribune.com >> Nation/World

ACROSS THE NATION



2 face bouquet of drug charges

Items compiled from Tribune news services
Published July 18, 2004

CLIFTON, NEW JERSEY -- Roses are red, and sometimes they attract the boys in blue.

Police said they uncovered a ring of heroin smugglers who saturated cardboard flower boxes with $1 million worth of a liquid form of the drug.

After flying the rose-packed boxes into Kennedy International Airport, the smugglers would have extracted the heroin from the cardboard to sell it, authorities said.

"How suspicious are you going to be of boxed flowers?" police Detective Sgt. Patrick Ciser said Thursday.

Two New Jersey men from Colombia, Juan Cortez Arias and John Rivera, were arrested Tuesday and charged with drug offenses.


Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

First Big Coke Bust in Burma

First Major Cocaine Seizure for Rangoon
The Irrawaddy. 2004-07-22

By Aung Zaw.

July 22, 2004—Burmese authorities seized an unspecified amount of cocaine and heroin from boats in the international waters last week, according to sources in Rangoon. The seizure appears to have been one of the biggest in years and is the first to have involved cocaine, but state-run newspapers have not yet reported it.

On Thursday, July 15, two feeder boats carrying cocaine and heroin were intercepted by naval patrol vessels and customs officials offshore from Monkey Point, south of Rangoon. The two boats were headed for a Swiss-flagged ship at the time the interdiction took place. Several other feeder boats escaped capture.

According to an official at the Myanmar Port Authority, who spoke on condition on anonymity, the seizure was the biggest in lower Burma in more than a decade (on July 14 AFP reported that police had seized more than 500 kg of heroin from a fishing village in Ye township, Tenasserim Division, 600 km southeast of Rangoon). But the official did not elaborate on how much was confiscated. Narcotics officials in Burma could not be reached for comment.

The two intercepted feeders boats and their crews were brought to Rangoon Port on Friday, July 16. An official investigation is underway, sources said. Though it is not confirmed yet, two prominent Rangoon businessmen are believed to be involved in the drug-smuggling ring.

Coca is grown and refined into cocaine almost entirely in three South American nations—Columbia, Peru and Bolivia. Burma has been a major source of opium and its primary derivative, heroin, since the 1950s, but last week’s drug bust provided the first solid evidence that the country is being used as a transit point for international cocaine distribution.

While cocaine use is almost unheard of in Burma, it is common among the wealthy and upwardly mobile in Thailand and other countries in Southeast Asia.

900 pounds of marijuana, $76,400 in cash, vehicles taken from farmhouse

My hometown! :D

NEW LYME, Ashtabula County Ohio — Nearly a thousand pounds of marijuana and tens of thousands of dollars were confiscated from a New Lyme Township home Tuesday night.

Along with more than 900 pounds of marijuana, $76,400 in cash, five vehicles, two Harley-Davidson motorcycles and a Honda four-wheel all-terrain vehicle were among the list of other items confiscated from the home during the raid, which resulted in six arrests.

The residents of the farmhouse at 5179 Day Road, located just off Route 6, west of Route 11, received an unpleasant surprise Tuesday night after they were met by more than 25 officers of the Trumbull-Ashtabula-Geauga (TAG) law-enforcement task force, Cleveland-Based U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officers and Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation officers, following a one-year investigation and the raid on the house, which took a week and a half of careful planning and led to the arrests of six individuals.

“We stepped into the house and said, ‘Wow.’ The smell was obvious,” Geauga County Sheriff Daniel C. McClelland said.

McClelland said the marijuana, believed to be from the San Diego area, was found in various bedrooms of the farmhouse. The money was found throughout the house and vehicles.

The street value of the marijuana is estimated at $1.6 million. Police are considering the possibility of a potential connection to Mexican narcotraffickers. The marijuana was mostly in 10-pound bricks.

“We’re really pleased with the way everything went with this operation. The group did a fantastic job, and it was a great team effort,” Ashtabula County Chief Deputy Sheriff Howard Shetler said.

This raid comes a close second to TAG’s biggest raid, where 4,000 marijuana plants in southern Ashtabula and northern Trumbull County were seized about a year ago.

According to a TAG press release, resident Thomas MacWilliams, 40, conducted the drug business from the home. He was placed in the Ashtabula County Jail in Jefferson. Five of the six people arrested are from Ashtabula and Lake counties; one person is from California. They range in the age from 19 to 41 years.

The raid, which occurred at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, continued into the early morning hours Wednesday.

Conveniently, Ohio law enforcement had been tipped off by a California-division DEA office after a recent drug bust in California led authorities to believe that activity was headed this way. The dealer, traveling from California to Ohio, was arrested upon his arrival at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. A courier traveling from California to Ohio, was under California-division DEA surveillance using a global positioning system locator, and was carrying 200 pounds of the marijuana, which was confiscated at the New Lyme residence.

One firearm, scales and marijuana papers also were found at the residence.

All actions of the dealer and others involved were under surveillance, down to the arrival of the car in New Lyme Township. According to McClelland, this dealer had been in operation for 10 years. He said it is possible 91 people may have ended up selling as little as a pound each of the marijuana.

“Judging by the amount that was confiscated, we took out one of the biggest northeast Ohio operations there is, not exclusive to just Ashtabula, Lake or Geauga,” Shetler said.

The six individuals who were arrested will be arraigned today in Eastern District Court. The task force is seeking charges of drug trafficking, possession of drugs, and engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity.

“This is a great example of what happens when law enforcement works together. We want to put all dope deals in northeast Ohio out,” McClelland said.


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Follow-up re: cocaine-smuggling dogs

Two Guilty of Canine Cocaine Smuggling Bid
Thu, July 22, 2004

LONDON (Reuters) - Two Britons were found guilty on Wednesday of an elaborate plot to smuggle cocaine into the country by surgically implanting packets of the drug inside two Labrador dogs.

Gregory Graham, 27, and Kaye Chapman, 20, plotted to smuggle 1.3 kilograms of cocaine into Britain hidden inside the stomachs of golden Labrador Rex and black Labrador Frispa.

But the scheme was foiled when officials at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport became suspicious at the behavior of Rex and Frispa when they arrived from Colombia en route to London's Stansted Airport.

Rex was lively but a drugs package had burst inside Frispa and she was lying apathetically.

Dutch vets operated on the dogs, removing 11 cylindrical objects from Rex and 10 from Frispa, who later died.

Altogether the packets contained a total of 1.3 kilograms of cocaine.

British police then swooped when two men and a woman arrived at Stansted to pick the dogs up, and arrested the owner of the house where the dogs were to be sent.

On Wednesday Gregory and Chapman were convicted at Norwich Crown Court of conspiracy to import drugs. Two other co-accused were cleared.

"This was an extremely callous method of drug importation that resulted in the death of Frispa and the needless suffering of Rex," said Detective Chief Inspector Andy McDonald afterwards.

Link

Briton held in Ghana over $145 million cocaine haul

Briton held in Ghana over $145 million cocaine haul

Tue 20 July, 2004

By Kwaku Sakyi-Addo

ACCRA (Reuters) - Police in Ghana are holding an Englishman suspected of being behind a plot to smuggle $145 million (78 million pounds) worth of cocaine seized earlier this year, Ghanaian narcotics officials said on Tuesday.

Craig Alexander Pinnick, 53, from Grimsby, was arrested in a West African country on July 9, Isaac Akuoko, executive secretary of the Ghana Narcotics Control Board, said.

"We've been looking for him for more than six months. We found him with the help of Interpol in a West African country. But I can't disclose which country," Akuoko said.

Police have charged Pinnick, who has been resident in Ghana for 10 years, with importation and possession, and engaging in criminal conspiracy to commit an offence relating to narcotic drugs, according to Akuoko.

In January, Ghanaian narcotics agents discovered 674 kg (1,486 lbs) of cocaine at the home of Briton Kevin Gorman, 59, in Tema, a port city near Accra following a two-year investigation.

European anti-drug officials say Latin American drug cartels are using West African countries more and more as a route to evade the authorities and smuggle narcotics into Europe.

Officials said several Colombian cartels had set up smuggling rings in Senegal, Togo, Ghana and Mauritania. Cocaine from Latin America is first shipped to West Africa and then sent on to Europe in normal shipping containers, they say.

Pinnick was expected to appear in court on July 27. Each offence carries a minimum of 10 years in prison. Pinnick, a marine cargo technician, is married with a 24-year-old son.

Gorman, three other Britons and a 45-year-old German, Sven Herb, are currently on trial for drugs importation, possession and conspiracy offences.

The other British suspects are David Logan and Frank Laverick, both 43, and directors of a company called Ocean Maritime in Gibraltar, and Alan Hodgson, retired building manager from Wales.

Akuoko said Pinnick and Herb, a boat skipper, were responsible for picking up the drugs from the high seas off boats believed to have originated from South America.

Link

Cildren 9, 12 arrested on drug dealing charges

Two children in drug arrests
July 24, 2004

A 12-YEAR-OLD girl and a nine-year-old boy were among 14 people arrested yesterday over suspected heroin sales in Sydney's western suburbs.

Police raided a Villawood home on a search warrant after obtaining information from the local community.

An 18-year-old Villawood man was charged with recruiting children to engage in criminal activity, supplying a prohibited drug and conducting a drug premises.

A 39-year-old Villawood woman was charged with allowing a home to be used as a drug premises.

Both have been refused bail and will appear in Parramatta Bail Court today.

Eleven other people were issued with court attendance notices for being in a drug premises and will face Fairfield Local Court on August 13.

In the raid, codenamed Operation Reede, police said they seized heroin, items used in the sale of drugs and cash.

Fairfield local police commander Superintendent Daryl Donnolley said the arrests were a shining example of police working with their community.

"It sends a strong message to the public that illegal activities such as these will not be tolerated," Superintendent Donnolley said.

The Australian

LInk

Duo jailed for smuggling drugs in dogs

LONDON (AFP) - A British man and woman were found guilty Wednesday of attempting to smuggle over one kilogramme of cocaine into Britain from Colombia in the stomach of two Labrador dogs.
The Labradors had 21 canisters holding more than one kilogramme (2.2 pounds) of the drug surgically implanted inside their abdominal cavities and were used as carriers to smuggle the drugs from Colombia.

One dog had to be put down after a vet found that the canisters had fused with some of its vital organs.

Gregory Graham, 27, of Harrow, northwest London, and Kaye Chapman, 20, also of Harrow, were convicted unanimously at Norwich Crown Court in east England on Wednesday.

The pair were arrested with two others after a sting operation at Stansted airport, east of London, last September.

British police were tipped off about the elaborate plot by vets at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport worried about the sick animals.

The dogs, a golden Labrador called Rex and a black Labrador called Frispa, arrived for a stopover in Amsterdam on a flight from Colombia on September 27, 2003.

http://www.brunei-online.com/bb/fri/jul23w38.htm

Police arrest six and find thousands of pot plants in marijuana bust

Police arrest six and find thousands of pot plants in marijuana bust

Canadian Press

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

OTTER LAKE, Que. (CP) - Quebec provincial police officers discovered thousands of pot plants after busting a marijuana growing operation on Tuesday.

Six people were arrested including one minor, police said.

The 6,000 to 8,000 plants are estimated to have a street value of as much as $15 million, said police spokesman Marc Ippersiel.

Ippersiel described it as a high-tech operation and said the marijuana is "of very good quality."

The plants were being cultivated in about 20 greenhouse-like structures near this community in western Quebec.

Link

Rapper Indicted For Drug Trafficking

Big Hutch Indicted For Drug Trafficking

By Jay Casteel
Tuesday - July 27, 2004


Just as many rap stars have been the target of what the press calls the "hip-hop task force" in New York then Miami, a rapper from the west coast is claiming he too has been targeted by law enforcement.

Recently, Big Hutch, whose real name is Gregory Hutchinson, of the rap group Above The Law was pulled over while driving and indicted for conspiracy to traffick close to one thousand pounds of marijuana by the D.E.A.. According to the rapper, he has been falsely accused.

"Some other guys had been arrested, who I hadn't had any contact with for a while," Hutch said via a statement. "They gave the feds my name, and said I financed their drug operation, which isn't even true."

The story gets deeper as Hutch explains that Federal Agents questioned him, but not about the case his allegedly involved in-- instead trying to find information about people in the music industry.

"When the feds interviewed me, they didn't ask me who I knew who was involved in drugs," said Hutch. "Rather, they asked me who in the music industry was involved in drugs. They were just interested in people who worked in music business. So I kind of wonder if that's why these other guys used my name, since that is what the feds want to hear."

The Los Angeles rapper, who recently released his second solo album Live From The Ghetto, says that an employee of his record label had his phone was tapped and that only is how he has fell under this scrutiny. His lawyer has advised him to cop a plea since "hearsay is admissible in federal trials, unlike in other court criminal proceedings." There was no trial and Hutch is awaiting his sentence.

Hutch will turn himself in tommorrow (July 28th) to begin serving his sentence. The rapper in understandly angry and says the claims are "ridiculous."

"They were trying to claim that I financed their drug operation, and that I was the beneficiary because I have a record label," Hutch explained. "No one could prove it, but because of the association with these guys, they charged me with conspiracy. I ended up getting charged for several years for a crime I had nothing to do with."

A music video for Hutch's new single "Lyrical Murder" has just been released through his own West World/Activate Entertainment.

Link

yeah well he whines like a bitch.... Not like my nigga shine!!!

redeyes2403 said:

yeah well he whines like a bitch.... Not like my nigga shine!!!

Click to expand...

I'd like to see how you would whine if you were falsely accused of a crime, and had to serve several years in prison.