Pubdate: Mon, 5 Feb 2001
Source: U.S. News and World Report (US)
Section: U.S. NEWS; Vol. 130 , No. 5; Pg. 14
Copyright: 2001 U.S. News & World Report
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Author: Chitra Ragavan

CRACKING DOWN ON ECSTASY

Law Enforcement Is Treating The 'Hug Drug' As If It Were The Next Cocaine. 
Is It?

In September 1999, two young case agents at the Drug Enforcement 
Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation in Los Angeles asked 
federal prosecutor Jean Mohrbacher for a favor. The agents had gotten a tip 
that a low-level street dealer was selling ecstasy, the hot drug among 
America's teens, and they wanted Mohrbacher to tap his phone. They got the 
bug. But instead of nailing a small-time dealer, they stumbled upon a major 
international ecstasy and cocaine distribution syndicate. And all of a 
sudden, ecstasy--until then considered small potatoes in the drug 
world--popped on to the government's radar screens--big time.

In this case, the suspected ringleader was Tamer Adel Ibrahim, 26, a 
naturalized American who was born in Egypt and moved to the States as a 
teenager. The feds say they discovered in a 15-month investigation that 
Ibrahim, a jet-setting, high-rolling playboy, was buying cocaine from the 
Mexicans and Colombians, selling it for megabucks to Europeans, and then 
using those profits to buy millions of ecstasy tablets from the Netherlands 
to hawk in the United States. Last July, the U.S. Customs Service at Los 
Angeles International Airport seized 16 Federal Express packages containing 
2.1 million ecstasy tablets (1,096 pounds) with an estimated street value 
of at least $ 41 million. Authorities say the Customs Service was tipped 
off by the DEA and the FBI, which knew about the shipments from wiretaps. 
Ibrahim, who knew the feds suspected him, fled first to Mexico and later to 
Amsterdam, where he was allegedly in the midst of arranging another big 
deal when Dutch authorities arrested him last September. "This is a 
snapshot of what the new emerging trafficking groups look like," says 
Michele Leonhart, head of the DEA's Los Angeles division.

Red tide. Law enforcement officials say that the bust, dubbed Operation Red 
Tide, is the largest seizure of ecstasy in the United States and that 
Ibrahim was probably the largest alleged wholesaler of the drug to date. 
The case has raised the curtain on an alarming new development in the drug 
wars: the rise of newly formed international, mostly Israeli and Russian, 
organized crime syndicates aggressively marketing ecstasy to Americans, 
mainly in their teens and 20s.

Ecstasy was originally prescribed by marriage counselors in the 1970s 
because of its supposed ability to bring out the warm and fuzzy feelings 
that couples had for each other (hence its nickname: "the hug drug"). The 
federal government banned it in 1985 after discovering that it was becoming 
popular as a recreational drug and was potentially harmful if misused. But 
that didn't stop the burgeoning illicit market. In fact, some say it may 
have encouraged it. "The Europeans . . . tell us that we are the worst 
abusers of it," says Joseph Keefe, DEA's chief of operations.

Young users. What's most worrisome, say officials, is that younger and 
younger Americans are trying it. Today, the use of ecstasy is growing 
faster than any other illegal drug in the United States, according to the 
White House drug czar's office. A University of Michigan survey conducted 
last year indicates that 1.3 million of the nation's students in grades 
eight through 12 have tried ecstasy at least once and that almost 450,000 
students currently use it.

Users like to say the drug is risk free. Not so, say experts, who point to 
some serious side effects (box, Page 16). The problem is that researchers 
have yet to definitively determine whether there are any long-term medical 
ills. Critics of U.S. drug policy grumble that the recent crackdown is 
little more than a PR stunt designed to make the feds look good to help 
them wring more money out of Congress. "I don't want to make it sound like 
ecstasy is innocuous, but I fear there is far too much alarmism regarding 
it," says Michael Massing, a freelance journalist and author who has been 
covering the drug wars for a decade.

But law enforcement officials aren't taking any chances. "It could be worse 
than cocaine. We just don't know," says Christopher Giovino, head of the 
DEA's Long Island, N.Y., district office. Giovino worries that the DEA, 
until now consumed by cracking down on methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin 
traffic, may have missed crucial early signs. So far, unlike heroin and 
crack cocaine, there's no evidence that ecstasy is addictive or so 
expensive that it prompts violent crimes by users desperate for money to 
buy more. Ecstasy also seems to have a pacifying, happy-time effect, so 
users don't generally stand out like hyped-up crack users or nodding heroin 
addicts. Consequently, Giovino says, ecstasy--which costs as little as $ 7 
a pill but can run as high as $ 50 a pop at big-city raves--had already 
become the drug of choice among young partygoers, especially in raves or 
dance clubs, by the time the feds caught on.

In the past two years, DEA agents in New York nabbed some big ecstasy 
dealers--but none as allegedly big-time as Ibrahim. "We've had to learn 
quick lessons of Israeli and Russian crime groups 101," says Los Angeles 
DEA agent Michael Braun. Ibrahim and his cohorts, mostly young Egyptian, 
Syrian, Russian, Israeli, and Korean men, allegedly ran a state-of-the-art 
global operation. Authorities say they would ship loads of ecstasy from 
Amsterdam to Los Angeles by way of France, Korea, and Mexico, usually via 
Federal Express. Ibrahim would then allegedly monitor the drug shipments on 
the Internet using FedEx's package tracking system.

Floating labs. According to DEA sources, more than 90 percent of the 
ecstasy on the U.S. market comes from the Netherlands and Belgium, where 
the drug is also illegal, although Romania and Poland now are becoming 
players. The tablets are manufactured in makeshift mobile labs set up 
inside 18-wheeler trucks or on floating barges; they're transported by 
criminal syndicates, many run by Israeli nationals, based in Europe, 
Israel, and America. "That is the ecstasy triangle," says Robert Gagne, a 
DEA agent on Long Island. Many of these Israeli nationals are Russian 
emigres; many have prior convictions for cocaine and heroin smuggling. 
Gagne says many are also involved in diamond smuggling from Antwerp, 
Belgium, which for centuries has been the world's diamond-polishing 
capital. "The unification of Europe has helped ecstasy dealers as much as 
NAFTA has helped the Mexicans with free trade," says Gagne.

Recent DEA investigations show how these reputed syndicate heads frequently 
use couriers or "mules" to carry the drugs. An Israeli who came to the 
attention of authorities, Oded Tuito, allegedly recruited female American 
strippers from dance clubs. Authorities say one of his flunkies was Sean 
Erez, who moved to Amsterdam after Tuito's arrest on drug charges in 1999. 
(Tuito was released last October, never convicted, after being held in a 
French prison for nearly two years.) In Amsterdam, Erez allegedly built a 
giant ecstasy smuggling ring using more than a dozen young Hasidic Jews as 
his couriers because their innocent demeanor and conservative appearance 
got them past airport security. Erez, who now is in a Dutch prison, has 
lost all his extradition appeals and could be returned to the United States 
as early as this week. Law enforcers say he will be the first ecstasy 
dealer to be prosecuted as head of a continuing criminal enterprise under a 
drug statute mimicking the famous RICO statutes used to take down organized 
crime families. If convicted, he faces a likely sentence of 20 years in 
prison. "We're hoping this sends a shock wave through the smuggling 
community," says Giovino.

Nouveau riches. But DEA officials aren't confident that it will. There's so 
much money in ecstasy that agents say smugglers don't seem to care about 
the risks, often even flaunting their wealth. Take the case of Michel 
Devalck, a Belgian who, according to authorities, believed he was 
delivering 150,000 ecstasy tablets to a distributor waiting for him at 
Miami Beach on December 13. Devalck arrived in a 2001 Mercedes SUV that he 
leased for a whopping $ 70,000. Even the feds waiting to nab him were 
impressed.

As the government cracks down, ecstasy cases are beginning to clog some 
courts. In New York, so many Hasidic Jews are being arrested as couriers 
that a federal judge in Brooklyn blew a gasket during a March sentencing 
hearing for one Hasidic teenager who was involved in the giant smuggling 
ring allegedly run by Erez. The judge upbraided dozens of Hasidic men and 
women who had come to court to offer testimony on behalf of the teen. "I 
don't know where this community was while all of this was going on," Judge 
I. Leo Glasser admonished from the bench. Law enforcers want to make sure 
they won't be asked the same question down the road.

Ecstasy seizures Tablets seized by Customs (in fiscal years)
'97       400,000
'98       750,000
'99       3.5 million
'00       9.3 million
Source: U.S. Customs Service
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MAP posted-by: Beth