-from mercurynews.com-

By Mark Gomez and Sean Webby

About 200 law enforcement agents spread out in early morning raids today to take down what they called a San Jose family-run methamphetamine distribution ring that was selling crank from San Francisco to Gilroy.

Authorities believe the ring was responsible for about 20 pounds of meth hitting the streets every month, according to FBI Special Agent Joe Schadler. That amount of drugs - especially if it were pure and able to be sold after being mixed with other substances - could bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Many involved in the lucrative drug ring are relatives, Schadler said.

But few other details about the ring - Who was in charge? How did they operate? - were forthcoming from federal agents or prosecutors yesterday despite the high profile busts. A press conference about this and other matters was scheduled by U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello for Friday.

Around 6 a.m. today, members of a joint organized crime and drug enforcement task force, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, executed warrants at homes in San Jose, Gilroy and San Francisco. One person was arrested Tuesday and 11 of the suspects were arrested Wednesday. Agents also seized 2.5 pounds of meth, $45,000 in cash and drug paraphernalia.

Ten of the 14 people indicted are from San Jose.

They are: Guillermo Alejandro Zaragoza, 25, Eduardo Zaragoza, 24, Manuel Corona Contreras, 51, Martin Estrado Zaragoza, 43, Roberto Zaragoza Ruiz, 29, Lorenzo Carbajal,

46, Paul Anthony Kozina, 33, Martel Murillo Valencia, 34, Angelica Maria Rodriguez, 33, and Irma Corona, 44, all of San Jose. Also arrested were: Richard Aldo Parodi, 32, and David Blake Weld, 43, of San Francisco, David Bejines Quezada, 33, of Gilroy and Juan Zaragoza, 30, of Stockton.

Ruiz and Parodi remained fugitives today.

An unidentified man was also arrested on a criminal complaint.

All suspects face federal drug distribution charges, many of which carry life sentences, if they are convicted and get the maximum.

Ten of those arrested were brought before before U.S. Magistrate Edward Chen in San Francisco this afternoon, one defendant in a Target store uniform. Most of the defendants pleaded not guilty and were held without bail until detention hearings could be held next week.

The raids were executed in conjunction with several law enforcement agencies, including the San Mateo County Narcotics Task Force, California Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, Immigration Customs Enforcement and the San Jose and San Francisco police departments, Schadler said.

Sources said the two-year investigation was nicknamed “Operation White Hand” - an apparent reference to an evil wizard in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

-from canada.com-

By Trish Audette, Edmonton Journal
EDMONTON - Police made their first major qat bust last week, seizing almost as much of the leafy drug as was collected in 16 separate seizures at Edmonton International Airport in 2007.

Officers, tipped last week by the Canada Border Services Agency, intercepted the drug at a hotel near 118th Avenue and 65th Street.

“The destination for the delivery was a hotel suite,” said police spokeswoman Karen Carlson.

When chewed, qat is a mild narcotic. The plant is common in the Middle East and eastern Africa, and the leaves are best when fresh.

They typically have a shelf life of 48 hours, said border services spokeswoman Lisa White, so the drug is often shipped frozen.

In this case, the 135 kilograms of qat leaves were fresh. White did not say where the cargo came from.

“We’re the frontline of defence. We stop goods (or) people from coming into the country that are inadmissible,” White said, which means air cargo and commercial shipments are checked.

“This is not uncommon for us; we seize qat all the time.”

In 2007, 140 kilograms of qat were seized at the Edmonton airport. There were 60 busts at the Calgary International Airport, where 576 kilograms of qat were seized.

White said border services agents come across the drug more now than they did a few years ago.

In many countries, qat is not illegal.

Carlson said small amounts of qat have been seized on Edmonton’s streets, but Friday’s bust was “the first of its kind in the city.”

In the past, Edmonton police gang unit officers have described how Sudanese gangs get involved in trafficking cocaine and qat.

Abdullahi Barre, 39, and Said Ali, 50, were both charged with importing a controlled substance and possession for the purpose of trafficking.

Both men are scheduled to appear in court March 11.

-from thestar.com-

By The Canadian Press

Three people from Markham, Ont., have been charged with various drug offences after police busted an alleged drug lab.

A property management company went to an industrial unit in Markham to repossess it because the rent had not been paid.

The company called police after finding equipment inside that was allegedly used for drug production.

Police searched the unit as well as two homes in Richmond Hill, Ont., and a third in Niagara Falls, Ont., where police say they found the beginnings of another lab.

Police say they seized four pill presses, chemicals, powders, chemical glassware, 100 kilograms of ecstasy, 2.5 kilograms of methamphetamine, more than $125,000 in cash, two handguns and ammunition from the Richmond Hill homes.

Yuk Ming Wong, 44, Hong Wen Wang, 75 and Sze Man Wong, 21, are facing numerous charges.

-from wivb.com-

By Alysha Palumbo

(Buffalo, NY, February 20, 2008) - - Local law enforcement agencies made dozens of arrests during raids this morning. Its a story you saw first on four. News 4’s Alysha Palumbo is at Buggalo Police HQ

About 50 arrests were made today in South Buffalo yanking dozens of suspected drug dealers off the streets. Buffalo Police and the local drug enforcement administration teamed up to raid several homes today. This is exclusive video of one of the raids on Pomona Place. Two men were arrested there, Paul Barrett and Sergio Santiago. This home on Milton Street was also raided, leading to the arrest of Matthew McCooey. The DEA arrested nine people on federal drug charges, while we’re told Buffalo Police arrested about 40 more people. This wraps up a three day joint investigation.

Nancy Cote, DEA Resident Agent in Charge, “The DEA here in Buffalo and the Buffalo Police Department ran basically two independent investigations but they were collateral in the fact that the intelligence was exchanged between our two agencies. It’s called a war on drugs, they call it little different battles, but we never give up and we’re successful.”

Buffalo Police will be holding a press conference at 5:30 p.m., Wednesday, to elaborate on their involvement in these raids.

-from cbc.ca-

RCMP in Manitoba have arrested 16 people from British Columbia after raiding more than a dozen rural properties investigators said housed marijuana grow operations.

RCMP executed search warrants on 13 properties Tuesday in rural areas around the province’s capital region, including the municipalities of West St. Paul, Brokenhead, St. Clements, Springfield, La Broquerie and Tache.

Twelve of the properties housed grow operations, while one was a “staging area,” investigators said.

Seized items are still being inventoried, but include more than 3,000 marijuana plants, cash and equipment. No firearms have been found.

RCMP believe the 16 people arrested came to Manitoba to set up the grow operations, and may have connections to organized crime.

“It definitely has some level of sophistication,” said Sgt. Line Karpish. “The fact that all of these individuals are linked and the magnitude of their operation certainly suggests that these people are linked to organized crime.”

One of the 16 suspects, a 25-year-old man, was picked up at the Vancouver airport on Tuesday as he waited to board an international flight.

Charges are pending but will include the production of marijuana, possession for the purpose of trafficking, possession of the proceeds of crime, theft of electricity and conspiracy to produce marijuana, RCMP said.

The marijuana appears to have been destined for sale in Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba, Karpish said.

-from thetimesonline.com-

By Joe Carlson

Although the news is sometimes lost in the fast clip of region drug busts, federal drug-enforcement officials say they’ve broken up six major distribution operations in a little more than three years, preventing millions of doses of narcotics from hitting the streets.

Rough calculations show that the busts netted at least 1.79 million individual doses of cocaine and 228,000 doses of heroin in that time period, but experts say the actual number of doses probably is much higher because of a differential in drug purity.

In addition to the drugs, local U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration offices report that the six major drug distribution organizations brought down between 2005 and early 2008 by federal, state and local law enforcement translated into 46 arrests and $1.75 million in seized assets. Those assets include cars, cash and real estate

“It’s just guys out there, doing their jobs, taking the risks and going after the top drug dealers in the area,” said Dennis Wichern, assistant special agent in charge of Indiana for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

From violent street gangs to a mail-order scheme run out of a prison in Thailand, the organizations varied widely in their modes of getting drugs onto the streets of Lake and Porter counties.

What the cases had in common, Wichern said, was resistance from the region’s tightly interwoven network of drug-fighting officials that includes task forces of local, county and state police and agents from the FBI, DEA, and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Indiana remains “an active drug transportation and distribution area,” according to the DEA’s 2008 fact sheet on the state, with the primary supplies of cocaine, marijuana and heroin coming from Mexican drug cartels, primarily by interstate highways.

Peter Venturelli, chair of the department of sociology and criminology at Valparaiso University, was skeptical of the true impact of the anti-drug task forces.

He said the statistics on large drug hauls like the ones Wichern cited were designed to impress people who were not well-versed in illegal drug use “and that’s the bulk of the voters,” he said.

“I think there’s so much out there that these busts don’t do much to the actual supply,” said Venturelli, a co-author of the textbook “Drugs and Society.”

“If they didn’t do any drug busts at all, would anything really change?”

Wichern admitted that the void left by the bust from one dealer is often quickly filled again, and that the overall problem is created by the demand for illegal drugs.

But he compared the situation to bank robberies. Just because authorities have never stopped people from robbing banks does not mean authorities should stop going after the robbers, he said.

“Our fight against drug abuse and addiction is an ongoing struggle that should be treated like any other social problem,” Wichern said. “Would we give up on education and poverty simply because we haven’t eliminated all problems?”

SIX BUSTS, THREE YEARS
– In April 2006, authorities charged Santiago Castenada and three alleged partners with distribution and conspiracy to distribute heroin after an intensive investigation led to the seizure of 138 kilograms of cocaine and 8 kilograms of heroin at two locations in Northwest Indiana and Illinois. A kilogram is 2.2 pounds. Officials with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration called it one of the largest drug busts in Lake County history.
– The 2002 bust of a street-level heroin dealer in East Chicago led to the 2007 extradition of two Thai citizens who were allegedly running a large, international drug-distribution ring out of a maximum security prison in Bangkok using cell phones. Pasit Bencharit and Suwanee Spriprasarn are in U.S. custody, while a third alleged conspirator, Australian Mitchell Blake, remains in Thai custody.
– In 2005, Vice Lord gang member Lee Dickens was charged along with three co-defendants with distributing marijuana and kilogram-quantities of cocaine. Court records said Dickens bought the drugs from a distributor and sold them to street dealers in the Calumet section of East Chicago, where the powder cocaine was often cooked into crack.
– In early 2007, federal authorities brought charges against 17 people accused of operating a widespread heroin-distribution ring in Porter County. Everyone in the case was charged with conspiring to possess heroin, with the exception of Matthew Bishop, of Crown Point, who faced charges of distributing heroin. Bishop and three others have pleaded guilty to conspiring to distribute the drug.
– In October 2007, six people were charged with taking part in a large-scale cocaine distribution ring involving members of the Northwest Indiana branch of the Latin Dragons street gang. The gang’s purported leader, Rosalio Rincon of Merrillville, was fatally shot in by a DEA agent who was attempting to arrest Rincon on drug distribution charges. Police said Rincon tried to run down the agent with a car.
– After four years in investigations, authorities brought charges against seven people in January 2008 in an alleged distribution ring centered on the Schererville home of Kevin “Chocolate” Carter, who has pleaded not guilty. Authorities said they seized from the home more than 100 pounds of marijuana and several luxury vehicles, including a 2005 Bentley.

-from kxmc.com-

Authorities: Montana drug bust nets large amount of ecstasy

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) Three Canadian men face federal drug charges after a traffic stop near Glendive, Montana netted 145 pounds of the illegal drug Ecstasy worth about 5 million dollars on the street.

The Winnipeg men are accused of smuggling the drugs across the U.S.-Canada border into North Dakota on a snowmobile.

A federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent in Billings says it was one of the largest Ecstasy seizures in Montana.

The three have been identified as 32-year-old Timothy Morneau, 19-year-old Christian Laurin and 19-year-old Alan Mulder. They face up to life in prison if convicted.

-from mercurynews.com-

By Karl Fischer

Bay Area: 605 plants worth $500,000 seized one man arrested, two men sought

State and local authorities finished a three-month investigation by confiscating more than $500,000 worth of marijuana plants at three addresses in Contra Costa and Solano counties.

The investigation, led by the Contra Costa County Narcotics Enforcement Team, led to the arrest of Juan Valdivia, 28, on Wednesday at his job at Buchanan Field in Concord, team Cmdr. Norm Wielsch said.

Authorities are seeking Antioch resident Kevin Lum, 31, and Byron resident Brian Otis, 35, in connection with the case.

A tip put agents on to a grow operation in Antioch a few months ago, Wielsch said. The investigation culminated in six search warrants starting about 9 a.m. Wednesday in Antioch, Richmond, Vallejo and Byron.

Agents found 605 plants and 2 pounds of prepared marijuana at grow operations inside houses in the 2700 block of Shane Drive in Richmond and the 2300 block of Field Street in Antioch, as well as in the upstairs apartment of a light-industrial building in the 300 block of Lemon Street in Vallejo.

Authorities found growing equipment but no plants at a house in the 3200 block of Barton Lane in Antioch and searched a second house on the same block and a house in the 2500 block of Hoffman Lane in Byron.

At each address where marijuana grew, the cultivators stole electricity by bypassing the Pacific Gas & Electric meters, Wielsch said.

Valdivia was booked into County Jail in Martinez on suspicion of cultivating marijuana, possessing marijuana for sale, stealing power and conspiracy to distribute marijuana