Heroin ring takedown starts in Middle Tennessee
By Blake Farmer, News Correspondent
August 16, 2006

An investigation meant to dismantle a Mexican drug ring that started in Nashville almost one year ago has led to more than 150 arrests around the country.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez announced the findings of “Operation Black Gold Rush” on Tuesday even as local law enforcement officials were making arrests.

Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officials said the Mexican-based organization was made up of mostly illegal immigrants based in 15 cities, including Knoxville and Memphis. They allegedly had a well-run business model set up to move heroin around the country, with members even using titles like district manager and receiving salaries with benefits.

“This organization worked much more like an American corporate model,” said Harry Sommers, the local DEA special agent in charge, during a Tuesday press conference at the Estes Kefauver Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in downtown Nashville. “They even had a standardized product out of a city called Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico.”

Jim Vines, the U.S. attorney for Middle Tennessee, said the national bust points to the re-emergence of heroin as a popular drug. The highly addictive substance is similar to morphine and can be snorted, smoked or injected, producing a sense of euphoria.

“The more things change, the more they tend to stay the same,” Vines said during the press conference. “A drug that many of us haven’t paid much attention to in several years now has stuck its ugly head back up again.”

The defendants have been charged with drug trafficking and money laundering. Vines said by this morning, the 27 indictments in Nashville will have led to as many arrests. Federal narcotics charges come with punishments ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment. The maximum penalty for money laundering is 20 years.

While the formal investigation has concluded, the blitz on heroin will continue, Vines said.

Local DEA agents claim heroin use is on the rise among high schoolers and warn parents to be especially aware of the deadly drug. In Middle Tennessee, more than 20 pounds of heroin has already been confiscated, which is nearly half of the total weight retrieved from the national bust.

According to law enforcement officials, the ring would target its sales at drug addicts who were leaving treatment facilities. “They would go to the new city, go to the methadone clinics, and provide heroin to those individuals cheaply and/or free, just to get them back on the product,” Sommers said.

The indictments state that large packages of heroin were repackaged in Nashville and stored in warehouses for distribution. After users would call in an order, the runners would deliver color-coded rubber balloons that they carried in their mouths so as to swallow if necessary to avoid police detection.

The balloons varied in weight from as small as a one gram, which sold for roughly $150, to 30 grams, selling for nearly $4,000.




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