Note that the people involved in this are mostly if not all illegal imigrants. It is way too easy for these people to move back and forth accross our borders!!

Agents bust black tar heroin ring
130 arrested, including 20 in Ohio, on charges of selling Mexican drug
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Kevin Mayhood
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Franklin County Sheriff Jim Karnes’ deputies noticed black tar heroin showing up in central Ohio about nine months ago.


The hunger for heroin has brought a new form of the drug to Columbus and smaller central Ohio towns from Mexico, law-enforcement officials said.

Yesterday, law-enforcement agents nationwide launched Operation Black Gold Rush in an attempt to shut down a ring pushing black tar heroin.

Mexican immigrants were recruited to bring the dark, sticky form of the drug into the U.S. and to ferry cash back to its makers in the Mexican state of Nayarit on the Pacific coast, said Fred Alverson, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Columbus.

Distributors used local dealers who already had networks in Columbus and Cincinnati, as well as in Bucyrus, Mansfield, Marion and other cities, to sell the drug to known users and new customers, Alverson said.

In a planned sweep, more than 130 men and women were arrested in eight states yesterday, Drug Enforcement Administration officials said.

In central Ohio, 20 of the 28 suspects who had been secretly indicted were arrested by the afternoon.

Black tar heroin, a less-refined form of the drug, has been manufactured since the 1990s. The Franklin County sheriff’s office noticed it showing up here about nine months ago and asked the DEA for help. Eventually, Columbus and other law-enforcement agencies joined the investigation.

The DEA found the group pushing heroin here was also supplying cities across the country. Other cities involved in the sweep were Indianapolis; Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville, Tenn.; Denver; Los Angeles and Riverside, Calif.; Phoenix; Charlotte, N.C.; and Charleston, Columbia, Florence and Greenville in South Carolina.

The dealers in central Ohio were seen operating near highways, speeding down to stripmall parking lots and making sales in just minutes before driving off, said Gary Spartis, deputy criminal chief of the U.S. attorney’s office in Columbus.

Sellers included illegal immigrants and U.S. citizens. They were making about $5,000 per day here, said Anthony Marotta, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA office in Columbus.

Agents searched six homes in Columbus and Hilliard and seized records at La Marketa, 3459 Sullivant Ave., a restaurant-market where they said suspects were wiring cash back to Mexico. No one answered the telephone or the door at the business last night.

The local sweep also netted several guns and at least 1½ pounds of heroin.

Officials said they know of no deaths here linked to using black tar heroin.

An increase in opiate use has caught the eye of workers at Maryhaven, a Columbus drugand alcohol-treatment center. During the fiscal year that ended in June, 22 percent of the more than 7,000 people treated at Maryhaven reported that opiates were their drug of choice.

Most was street heroin, although the drugs included synthetically similar drugs such as Oxycontin, said Paul H. Coleman, president and chief executive officer of Maryhaven.

Just three or four years ago, opiates were the choice of 10 percent to 12 percent of users, Coleman said.

"It’s clearly growing here in central Ohio," he said.

The 20 suspects accused of selling and using the drug were in U.S. District Court yesterday for their initial appearances. They were chained at the ankles and wrists.

Interpreters sat between two pairs of men, translating the indictments into Spanish. A woman read and reread the indictment against her, shaking her head and covering her face with her hands.

All those arrested were charged with conspiracy to distribute heroin and could face up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

Eleven defendants also face one to three counts each of possession with intent to sell at least 100 grams of heroin. Each of those counts carries a minimum of five years and up to 40 years in prison.

Dispatch reporter Theodore Decker contributed to this story.


kmayhood@dispatch.com