Pubdate: Thu, 29 Jun 2000 Source: New York Times (NY) Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company Contact: 229 West 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 Fax: (212) 556-3622 Website: http://www.nytimes.com/ Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/ Author: Alan Feuer GREEN CARDS LEAD A STING TO DRUG RAIDS Nearly 160 Colombian and Mexican suspected drug traffickers believed to have been operating along the Eastern Seaboard were charged Wednesday with trading vast quantities of cocaine and heroin for green cards from an undercover agent posing as a crooked official of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. More than 100 of the suspects, most of whom lived in New York, were arrested as scores of law enforcement officers fanned out in a series of daybreak raids from New York City to southern Florida. The sting, which went by the code name Operation Wildcard, was intended to cripple the New York arm of the Mexican and Colombian drug cartels, particularly in upstate New York counties, said Daniel J. French, the U.S. attorney in Albany, N.Y., whose office is to prosecute the case. "These traffickers were very interested in obtaining green cards so as to come and go freely from the United States," French said. "But the cards they were dealt came from a stacked deck." The operation relied heavily upon an undercover agent of the INS in the Albany area who posed as a corrupt official and agreed to furnish the suspected traffickers with resident alien cards for $5,000 to $13,000 each, French said. Many times, the payments came in the form of drugs -- up to a half kilogram of heroin, for example. The deals were made at a number of small upstate restaurants, with names like Sharon's Place or Denny's, or highway motels like the Best Western Inn. The suspected traffickers were steered to the INS agent by two other undercover investigators working with the state police and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, who have been working for several years to infiltrate the drug cartels, said James W. McMahon, the state police superintendent. About a dozen of the defendants arrested Wednesday were described as cell managers, or leaders of the American wings of the cartels. While making the arrests, the authorities said, they seized seven kilograms of heroin, said to be worth more than $10 million on the street, and 12 kilograms of cocaine, said to have a street value of about $5 million. They also seized about $350,000 in cash. French said the green cards were a crucial tool used by the cartels, allowing the cell managers, their lieutenants and drug smugglers to pass easily through U.S. borders. He added that all of the defendants would be arraigned in Brooklyn in the next few days and then sent to Albany for prosecution. - --- MAP posted-by: greg