Raid breaks up major drug ring

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An international drug trafficking ring that routed Ecstasy and marijuana to two dozen cities in the United States and Canada has been broken up in a raid by drug agents that targeted for arrest more than 170 people in both countries.

Law-enforcement authorities in the United States and Canada, after a two-year undercover investigation known as Operation Candy Box, said the drug ring accounted for 15 percent of all the Ecstasy smuggled each year into this country, distributing more than 1 million of the illicit tablets a month in both countries.

The authorities said ring members laundered $5 million a month in profits through a series of bank transfers.

Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey said two suspected ring leaders, Ze Wai Wong, 46, a Chinese national, and Mai Phuong Le, 38, a Vietnamese national, were among those taken into custody during the pre-dawn raids by agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

A federal grand jury indictment accused Mr. Wong of heading drug distribution rings in 21 U.S. cities and in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal in Canada, and Mr. Le with orchestrating a money-laundering operation to conceal millions of dollars in illicit profits.

"Through the work of many different agencies, we have achieved a top-to-bottom decimation of a dangerous drug organization and a complementary attack on the fuel that drives the organization -- their money," Mr. Comey said during a Justice Department press conference.

DEA Administrator Karen Tandy said the two-year investigation, along with the resulting arrests, had "wiped out this entire organization."

Some of the 170 suspected gang members targeted in arrest warrants were taken into custody yesterday in Alexandria. Other arrests took place in Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Calif., San Jose, Calif., Jacksonville, Fla., New Orleans, Baton Rouge, La., Mobile, Ala., New York, Boston, Atlanta, Des Moines, Iowa, Minneapolis and Salt Lake City.

Undercover investigators discovered, for the first time, that three Ecstasy manufacturing laboratories had been set up in Canada, supplied by powder smuggled from the Netherlands, Mr. Comey said. The labs were dismantled by Canadian officials in August, he said.

Mrs. Tandy said the investigation documented that Ecstasy trafficking, which had been controlled largely by Russian and Israeli gangs, had now spread to groups with ties to Southeast Asia -- noting that the two suspected ringleaders were citizens of China and Vietnam. Both were arrested in Canada.

She said a second outcome of the undercover operation was the disruption of a sizable money-laundering business and the discovery of "significant weaknesses" in the U.S. financial system that make money laundering possible. The DEA, she said, has made financial investigations an agency priority.

Mrs. Tandy also said the drug ring trafficked in a highly profitable Canadian-grown marijuana known as "BC Bud," and was tied to identity theft and other criminal enterprises. The undercover operation was initiated in May 2001 by DEA and FBI agents in New York City, she said.

The DEA said Ecstasy, also known as MDMA (3-4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine), is distributed in tablet form and often is imprinted with designs or commercial logos. Costing as little as 25 cents to manufacture, the agency said, an Ecstasy tablet can sell on the street for as much as $40, with a tablet typically selling for between $20 and $30.

The drug is sold primarily at legitimate nightclubs and bars, at underground nightclubs sometimes called "acid houses," or at all-night parties known as "raves."

In 2000, the DEA said more than 6.4 million people 12 and older reported that they had used Ecstasy at least once in their lives.