Thread: SC: Mexican rings bring ‘black tar,’ ‘ice’

http://www.thestate.com/154/story/36207.html

Posted on Sun, Apr. 15, 2007

Mexican rings bring ‘black tar,’ ‘ice’

S.C. agents say cases with Mexican connections primarily involve four drugs: heroin, marijuana, methamphetamine and cocaine. Some examples:

HEROIN

Last year, narcotics agents with the Richland County Sheriff’s Department stumbled on a new kind of heroin in Columbia. It was called “black tar” Mexican heroin, a gooey, dark substance sold to addicts in balloons.

Local agents passed along the news to the local Drug Enforcement Administration office, which learned black tar was popping up across the United States.

DEA and local agents launched a massive investigation of black tar heroin in South Carolina. They found a sophisticated network of Mexicans using cell phones and runners to sell the drug in Columbia, Greenville, Myrtle Beach and Charleston.

In Charleston, the sellers even went to drug addiction clinics, where addicts go to try to stop using the drug, and handed out free samples, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jane Taylor testified in federal court earlier this year.

The practice of giving recovering addicts free samples — along with a free cell phone to call a dealer — was a common one, according to documents in the case.

In August, DEA and local officers conducted nationwide raids that nabbed more than 130 suspects. S.C. officers arrested 20 Mexicans and three Russians.

Translating 540 hours of wiretaps and video recordings in the case will take months. A trial is scheduled for the fall.

MARIJUANA

In 2002, a truck carrying fake fireplace fronts used as living room decorations pulled up to the U.S. customs station on the World Mission Bridge at Laredo, Texas.

Its destination, according to its bill of lading, was a small Edgefield County town: Trenton.

Suspicious customs officials X-rayed the fireplaces. Packed inside, cushioned by shredded cotton, were about 400 vacuum-sealed plastic bags of marijuana — about 900 pounds worth. An undercover agent boarded the truck and then delivered the marijuana to South Carolina.

Its first stop was Edgefield County’s Tienda Deleon, a Mexican store in Trenton owned by 20-something Fredy Deleon, who arrived in South Carolina in 1996. His store catered to immigrants hankering for a taste of home.

After the delivery, Edgefield and federal officers arrested Deleon and three other Mexicans. None talked to police, fearing it could mean death for their families in Mexico, said 11th Circuit Assistant Solicitor Ervin Maye.

In 2004, an Edgefield jury found Deleon and an accomplice guilty. He is in state prison, serving 25 years. He is appealing.

Mexican smugglers like to use legitimate business addresses like Deleon’s to lessen suspicion at border checkpoints, Maye said.

Mexican migrant workers also are being used to plant enormous patches of marijuana in rural S.C. fields. In Pickens and Chester counties, Latino migrant workers have cultivated large fields of marijuana plants, hidden under the high branches of pine trees.

‘ICE’ METH

Until the past few years, South Carolina’s meth trade was dominated by South Carolinians, many of whom cooked their own meth.

But both Congress and the S.C. Legislature have passed laws making it harder for U.S. meth makers to buy raw materials for the highly addictive drug.

Now, Mexicans are moving in — big time. Not only do they sell a more pure, more potent form of meth called “ice,” they also make it in large, well-equipped laboratories called superlabs that make huge batches of the drug daily.

So far, the biggest S.C. meth case involving Mexicans was code-named “Ice Cream” by law officers.

“Ice” stood for pure Mexican meth. “Cream” meant “cream of the crop,” meaning that in this case, police nabbed suppliers —Mexicans working out of Atlanta.

Ice Cream started in 2005 in Pickens County when police made a low-level buy. They had good luck and began to move quickly up the chain, “flipping” dealer after dealer, some of whom lived in Greenville County.

The rapidness of the investigation and the ability to quickly move across county lines were made possible by involvement of the state grand jury. It has its own staff of prosecutors and can bring together experienced narcotics officers from SLED and local law agencies. In all, 10 agencies joined in the Ice Cream hunt.

Within four days, informants led police to John “J.J.” Turner Jr., of Greenville, a major S.C. dealer. Turner fingered the Mexicans who regularly brought him ice from Atlanta packed in plastic bags and placed inside plastic containers. Officers said the ice likely was made in a Mexican superlab.

Turner paid the Mexicans up to $12,000 per pound of ice. A pound contains 453 grams. One-tenth of a gram of ice sells for up to $100. So one pound of ice has 4,530 doses, worth about $453,000 on the street.

The Mexicans arrested were Jose “Pablo” Guevara and Arturo Mendoza. With Turner, they are now in state prison.

In all, about 30 suspects have been convicted or have pleaded guilty, according to state Attorney General Henry McMaster, who oversees the state grand jury.

Another case involving an alleged Mexican dealer is pending in federal court in Rock Hill.

COCAINE

When police cracked the case involving Enrique Valdovinos, who ran the Los Caporales restaurant on Two Notch Road just outside Columbia, they destroyed a drug network that served hundreds, if not thousands, of Midlands users with cocaine from Colombia.

Valdovinos, in the country illegally from Mexico, had started supplying cocaine to South Carolinians, mostly in the black community in Newberry, several years ago, according to DEA and Newberry police and sheriff’s deputies.

DEA began wiretapping Valdovinos when he moved to Columbia, opened a restaurant and started a drug distributorship, according to officials and court documents.

In 2006, federal, state and local law officers arrested Valdovinos and 14 others. Most have pleaded guilty or have been convicted.

Other cases offer only a glimpse of an apparent network.

Last October, a Lexington County resident spotted a man putting a bag in a trash bin behind a bar in Gilbert.

A stakeout caught Martin Jimenez, a Mexican national. He was charged with trafficking in cocaine, according to the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department.

Officers found almost nine pounds of cocaine in the bag. Depending on its purity, it could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. So far, there have been no other arrests in the case.

— Compiled by Adam Beam and John Monk

But they're just trying to support their families while doing a "job" most Americans won't do. Filling a need. Right? It's not their fault because if Americans didn't want the drugs they wouldn't need to bring the drugs over the border, and they support the economy by spending their dirty drug money here. And of course they pay taxes on their income, don't they?