Global Organized Crime Reports (GOCR)
THE COMING BANANA WAR ?
Colonel David H. Hackworth, United States Army retired, is one of the most decorated and well known officers to ever serve in the military and is the author of the best-selling book The Price of Honor.
Colonel Hackworth in convinced that there is a one hundred percent chance that the conflict between the narco terrorist guerilla armies in Colombia and the government forces of that country will escalate significantly in the future.The colonel holds the opinion that if this happens the United States may have to make a much larger military commitment to the region than is currently in progress.
Colonel Hackworth is not alone in his speculations about the future of Colombia. As 2000 comes to an end the countries of
Panama, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador are preparing for possible border security problems as well as an increased flow of refugees (the United Nations has made a worst scenario projection of 30,000) from their chaotic neighbor.
One of the United States military bases that was forced to relocate from the Panama Canal has been reconstructed in Manta, Ecuador. It is from this location that planes loaded with chemical defoliants are being tasked to destroy Colombia's drug crops. The problem now is that the narco terrorists have threatened to begin guerilla operations inside Ecuador if the the spraying continues.
Many of Colombia's wealthiest and most talented have seen what is in the crystal ball and have packed up and fled to the United States, Costa Rica, Canada, Australia and Spain taking with them millions of dollars to invest in a more stable environment.
At present there are two principal narco terrorist organizations in Colombia which are the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) which has an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 armed members in the field and is commanded by Tirofijo "Sureshot" Marulanda and Alfonso Cano.
FARC was established in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party and is still supported in many ways by Fidel Castro. FARC engages in bombings (especially oil pipelines) murder, kidnapping, extortion, Hijackings and drug trafficking. FARC's operations extend to Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, Panama Ecuador and Brazil.
The National Liberation Army (ELN) - Colombia is smaller (estimated membership 3,000 to 6000) than the FARC but their
operations are similar.
The ELN was created in 1965 by anti-US Jesuit priests who were inspired by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and is still supported by Cuba.
According to the United States Department of Defense the FARC and ELN receive jointly about $ 500 to 600 million a year from their involvement in drug trafficking while others claim the figures should be between 750 million to one billion.
Report # GAO/NSIAD-00-90R from the United States General Accounting Office states "The drug threat confronting the United States has changed. Since 1996, Colombia has surpassed Bolova and Peru as the world's leading source of coca and has become the primary source of cocaine and heroin being shipped into the United States."
Also from the same report "According to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), several billion dollars flow into Colombia each year from the cocaine trade alone. This vast amount of money has made it possible for drug traffickers to gain unprecedented economic, political and social power and influence in Colombia. Moreover, according to ED, while two major groups (the Medellin and Cali cartels) dominated drug-trafficking activities during the late 1980's and early 1990's, today there are hundreds of smaller and more decentralized organizations. These groups are now
capable of producing "black cocaine" that hinders detection and are improving their transportation capabilities by manufacturing boats capable of carrying up to two tons of cocaine at high speeds."
"Moreover, DEA has recently reported that, in the past four
years, there has been a dramatic shift in the U.S. heroin market from Southeast Asian to Colombian heroin, especially in large East Coast cities like New York, Boston, Newark, Baltimore and Philadelphia. According to U.S. estimates, Colombia produces about six metric tons of heroin annually."
The primary coca growing area in Colombia is about the size of France and has terrible roads which make helicopters the only logical form of support for counter terrorist operations. The Departments (states) involved are Vichado, Meta, Guaviare, Caqueta and Putumayo.
James P. Lucier writing in the November 6, 2000 issue of Insight magazine states that the FARC and the ELN are turning Colombia into a "narcocracy."
Generally speaking Colombia has experienced a complete breakdown in law and order.
Government documents report that at the nation's MONTHLY homicide rate is over two thousand (2000). Thirty percent of the murders are committed by common criminals, twenty five percent by organized crime another twenty five percent in bar fights etc. and thirteen percent by terrorists.
Colombian crime observers state that if the terrorists lost their income from drug trafficking they would increase their other criminal activities i.e.: extortion, kidnapping, counterfeiting and robbery to make up the difference.
Colombia leads the Western Hemisphere in kidnapping for ransom and the yearly profits to the gangsters has been as high as $170 million.
While the world has watched and done nothing for thirty five years the narco-terrorists and the cartels have polluted the planet first with cocaine and now with heroin and as part of their enterprises they have murdered four presidential candidates, half the Justices of the Columbian Supreme Court, 1,200 police officers, 151 journalists and more
than 300,000 ordinary Colombians.
Always lurking in the background there has been the master
terrorist Fidel Castro, an obsessed Communist dictator who has made the destruction of the United States and the subversion of the Western Hemisphere his life's goal.
Beginning some thirty years ago Castro with the support of the former Soviet Union established terrorist/guerilla training schools in Cuba for any group or individual who shared his philosophy.
Over the years revolutionaries from the United States, Mexico, Jamaica, Canada, Puerto Rico and every Central and South American country have made their way to Havana to learn the arts of killing, subversion, espionage and drug trafficking etc. And they still do.
If a graduate didn't own a weapon when they arrived Castro made sure he or she had one (or more) when they left.
After training and equipping a terrorist organization from Chile (Movement of the Revolutionary Left -MIR) Castro allowed the group to set up a branch headquarters in Havana.
After leaving Cuba the MIR embarked on a campaign of kidnapping, bombing and murder.
Colombia's first narco-terrorist organization (which alledgedly is now defunct) was the infamous and murderous M-19. Not only did Castro train its members but he traded them weapons for 99.99% pure cocaine which he then turned around and sold in the United States through agents of the Cuban intelligence servive (DGI).
The DGI has been working closely with both the FARC and ELN since the departure of the former Soviet Union who took all their millions in aid to Cuba with them.
Another development that can't be ignored is the People's Republic of China (PROC) who according to Insight magazine has become a major player in Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba and the Bahama Islands.
As the new millennium begins another dark cloud is beginning to cover everything south of the Rio Grande.
The President of Venezuela Hugo Chavez is a former army officer who has a close relationship with both Fidel Castro and Colombia's Marxist narco-terrorists.
Writing in the July 28, 2000 issue of the Wall Street Journal, Mary Anastasia O'Grady, tells of how a Cuban intelligence agent (DGI) in Venezuela announced publicly that he was just one of fifteen hundred CAstro operatives who had been assigned to support the le fist agenda of President Chavez by promoting Communism and "brain washing" the Venezuelan people.
Furthermore the Cuban stated that many of his fellow DGI agents are stationed at Venezuelan military bases in case of a revolt against President Chavez.
An article in the August 30, 2000 issue of the Wall Street Journal tells of how immediately after his election Chavez wrote a "gushing" letter to world class terrorist Carlos the Jackal who is serving a life sentence in a French prison for multiple murders.
In a replication of Colombia numerous businesses and families have fled Venezuela because of an extremely high crime rate combined with Chavez's disastrous economic policies.
The President's cabinet is staffed with former left-wing guerilla fighters and politicians and he has recently visited Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya. Chavez has also banned U.S. flights over Venezuelan airspace, preventing their surveillance of Colombian drug traffickers.
President Chavez is adamantly opposed to the United States
providing any counter-narcotic assistance to Columbia.
A report issued on March 1, 2000 by the United States Department of States says "By some estimates, over one hundred metric tons of cocaine transit Venezuela annually en route to destinations in the United States and Europe. Venezuela is also a transit route for precursor chemicals used in the production of illicit drugs in the Andean source countries, and its financial sector is a prime destination for laundering proceeds from Colombian cocaine trafficking organizations."
While Brazil is caught up in the middle of a tidal wave of crime inspired violence organized mobsters in that country are trading guns for cocaine with the Colombian FARC. Brazil is one of the world's leading arms merchants. Kidnappings are on the rise and there is frequent rioting in the terribly over crowded prison system.
Jail breaks are common and in 1999 the nation's homicide rate was at an all time high while the murder conviction rate was only 2%.
Last year 70,000 licensed guns were reported stolen in the State of Sao Paulo while only 41,000 guns were seized by law enforcement.
On December 1, 2000 Vincente Fox will become the new President of the Republic of Mexico which is one of the most corrupt and crime ridden countries in the world.
Mexico puts endless quantities of meth and heroin, fifty tons of cocaine and twenty five tons of marijuana across the United States border every year.
Mexico's highly organized and politically powerful criminal
organizations have ties to the narco-terrorists and work in harness with the Colombian cartels.
A most reliable source has told us that President Fox will appoint Jorge G. Castaneda as his Foreign Minister (Secretary of State). Mr. Castaneda is described as being a known Communist who currently teaches at New York University and is someone who has been a harsh critic of United States policies in Latin America.
We have been advised that his appointment will be strongly
criticized by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina.
There is a strong left-wing political movement in Mexico
represented by the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD ) which has formed a working alliance with President Fox's National Action Party ( PAN ). Manuel Lopez Obrador, the Mayor of Mexico City, is a PRD member.
Mexico has a so-called guerilla organization in the State of
Chiapas known as the "Zapatistas " which is lead by a mysterious hooded figure who has been identified as Sebastian Guillen Vicente or "Subcomandante Marcos."
President Fox is planning on removing the Mexican army from all law/drug enforcement duties.
We don't know if Colonel Hackworth's predictions will come true but it would appear that there is a strong possibility that they mig
November 20, 2000
KIDNAPPING
It is estimated that 60-65 percent of all Fortune 500 companies purchase kidnap and ransom insurance policies at a cost of $150 million a year.
In Colombia kidnappers collect about $170 million a year in ransom and in Mexico the figure is about $ 60 million.Brazil comes next and then Guatemala.
Statistics indicate that on average only five percent of the cases are resolved and one in ten ends in a death.
NUMBER OF PEOPLE KIDNAPPED FOR RANSOM 1995-1998
South America 6,755
Asia/Far East 617
Europe 271
Africa 211
Middle East 118
North America 80
NUMBER OF KIDNAPPINGS IN THE 1990'S
Latin America: 1995 6,500
Colombia: 1989 - mid 1996 7,500
Brazil: 1989 - mid 1996 4,500
Mexico: 1989 - mid 1996 2,300
EDITORS NOTE: Based on the published research
of Professor Alexander Schmid.
Nefarious activities of the People's Republic Of China (PROC) in the United States involve two primary groups. The intelligence services of the People's Republic Of China (PROC) are engaged in a maximum effort to obtain every piece of technology that exists in the country while at the same time their criminal societies or Triads are corrupting the U.S.
political system, infiltrating financial institutions and attempting to gain control of America's most lucrative
criminal enterprises.
China's main spy agency is the Ministry For State Security (MSS), a huge intelligence and security bureaucracy molded after the former Soviet KGB.
The MSS conducts both foreign espionage and domestic internal security operations.
The military counterpart is the Military Intelligence Department of the People's Liberation Army general
staff.
In the United States the MSS uses an espionage network of fifteen hundred Chinese diplomats working out of seventy eight offices, an estimated fifteen thousand Chinese students
who arrive in the U.S. each year and an additional ten thousand Chinese who visit as members of some twenty-seven hundred delegations of various kinds.
Another key target for Chinese spies is the large ethnic community of Chinese-Americans. According to counterintelligence agents who are working the PROC , what the Chinese lack in sophistication they make up in numbers and aggressiveness.
Every Chinese citizen who applies to travel to America for any reason is screened by the MSS and likely espionage candidates are recruited and trained for both general and specific missions.
The PROC uses a number of different methods for acquiring technology from the United States.
The first is purchasing U.S.high-technology firms outright.
The second is using Hong Kong based front companies to buy technology and the third is to penetrate by the use of clandestine tactics, U.S. government agencies and private
corporations.
The MSS is also developing an extensive underground of "sleeper agents" throughout the United States who could be activated at anytime in the distant future.
Advanced training for career MSS officers includes terrorist operations and our sources in Hong Kong report that the MSS has purchased nuclear weapons from rogue parties in Russia
and other entities of the former Soviet Union (FSU) that continue to be for sale on the open market.
Hong Kong also states that the PROC would be far more likely to use nuclear or biological devices for terrorist attacks than the FSU.
The other ill wind that blows across the Pacific to Hawaii and the American mainland are the oldest and most powerful crime organizations in the world - the Triads.
According to a report from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) China serves as
major transshipment country for heroin enroute from Southeast Asia to Western markets. Heroin shipments routed through China are usually smuggled across the Chinese-Burmese border into the Yunnan Province, and then transported through Guangxi Province to Guangdong Province, where the drug is warehoused to await shipment overseas, usually through Hong Kong.
China's neighbor, Burma, produces almost twenty five hundred tons of illicit opium a year which surpasses
its closest rival Afghanistan with thirteen hundred tons.
The Triads long ago realized that the most lucrative marketing strategy was to obtain the opium or heroin from Burma and sell it to the world.
When the heroin reaches the United States it is distributed throughout New England and along the American East Coast by resident Chinese traffickers with direct links to the
Triads.
The DEA report further states that "ethnic Chinese groups remain the primary potential heroin threat to the United States because they are among the most sophisticated traffickers in the world."
Reports from the U.S. Department of State tell how China is a major producer of precursor chemicals for the manufacture of narcotics.
The ephedra plant, from which the precursor chemical ephedrine is made, grows wild in northern China.
China legally exports potassium permanganate, which is used in cocaine production.
One section of the State Department's report deals with Hong
Kong and states "Hong Kong traffickers continue to control large portions of Southeast Asian narcotics traffic, arranging both the financing and shipping of narcotics through
Asian ports."
The main centers for Triad worldwide operations are Hong Kong which is now part of the PROC and the Nationalist Island of Taiwan.
PROC officials in Beijing realized a long time ago that the Triads were a force to be reckoned with and the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping had sought to work out a plan of co-existence with them prior to the return of Hong Kong to the PROC in 1999.
Today there is a working relationship in place and there is an interfacing between the MSS and the PROC based Triads.
A Hong Kong newspaper reporter that we talked to said that every time you use public transportation or get in line to buy a movie ticket in his city you could be standing next to a Triad member.
There are four major Triads operating in Hong Kong which are the Sun Yee On, Wo Shing Wo, 14K and Wo Hop Wo.
We were told that three out of every one hundred Hong Kong residents over the age of fifteen is a Triad member and the estimated combined criminal population of the city is one
hundred and fifty thousand men and women/boys and girls.
Tokyo based reporter told us that the Hong Kong Triads were moving into Japan with a wave of immigrant smuggling, jewelry store robberies, credit card forgeries and new
alliances with the Yakuza gangsters.
Our contact in Great Britain reports that Scotland Yard has been investigating the Hong Kong Triads concerning the smuggling of women into England to work in their houses
of prostitution.
According to Inspector Theo Dawson, formerly head of London's Metropolitan Police vice unit the Triads threaten to kill the women's families if they discuss what is happening to their daughters and they charge the new recruits for the
air fares, rent and meals.
Inspector Dawson stated that theimported sex slaves are from Hong Kong,, Malaysia and Thailand.
Another new twist in Triad activities is the recruitment of school age girls into the organizations. Social worker Chan Chi-sing told us that "in the past they were only
girlfriends of Triad members and were seldom involved in Triad activity but now they are assigned jobs such as fighting and asking for protection money." Mr.Chi-sing said that the
girls are frequently sent back to school to lure their classmates to the Triads.
Chinese criminal organizations have existed in the United States since the gold rush of 1849. In the first wave of Chinese
immigrants to hit California there were men who just wanted to pick up some gold nuggets and then return home to live in grand style for the rest of their lives. But there were also
political dissidents who had fled the Manchu dynasty.
Very quickly the refugee Triad members moved in to grab control of the booming Chinatowns on both coasts of the United States. They recruited from the domestic Chinese organizations known as tongs which had initially served as
cultural touchstones for the early Chinese immigrants.
Tong in Chinese means "meeting hall" and their primary purpose is to serve legitimate business, fraternal and
political activities in their native communities.
While many of the tongs in the United States do conduct their
business within the law some of the largest ones do not.
The tongs who are engaged in illegal enterprises generally concentrate on gambling but they also diversify into other forms of criminal activity i.e.: extortion, murder, drug trafficking, bribery of public officials and prostitution.
One recent trend that worries the law enforcement is the interfacing between the tongs and the particularly vicious Vietnamese street gangs.
The Triads maintain a state-of-the-art facility in the Hong Kong area which produces top quality counterfeit documents and for $40,000 the Triads will arrange transportation for
any interested party to Mexico and then with the help of Mexican immigration officials who are on their payroll, they deliver their client intothe United States.
The plant also supplies forged passports and identification for
criminals who travel the world on Triad business or individuals who are on PROC intelligence missions.
TRIADS OPERATING IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
UNITED BAMBOO GANG (TAIWAN)
Worldwide Membership: 15,000
Members refer to themselves as Chuck Luen Bong
Their activities in the U.S. include drug trafficking, money laundering, contract murder, extortion, bank fraud, illegal
gambling, prostitution, alien smuggling and gun running.
The international leader of this Triad is Chi-LI Chen.
14K GROUP
The 14K is involved in illegal gambling, extortion, prostitution,
drug trafficking, murder, money laundering, illegal aliens and firearms smuggling.
American law enforcement believes that 14K drug trafficking profits are laundered through casinos on the East Coast of the United States and they smuggle counterfeit U.S. Currency into the U.S. from Hong Kong through San Francisco.
SUN YEE ON
This group interfaces with U.S. based Asian gangs and criminally inclined tongs. Historically their focus has
been on shaking down the entertainment industry and there
have been "wars" between the Sun Yee On and other Triads who have the same ideas.
WO HOP TO
In the United States this Triad is involved in heroin trafficking, murder, gambling, extortion and loan sharking.
Peter Chong heads the Wo Hop To.
December 4, 2000
The surge in the international smuggling of women, children and slave laborers, could be the world's fastest growing organized criminal activity.
Modern slavery, in the form of women and children sold into prostitution in the developed world or desperate people that go to extremes for a better life in the first world, is fast becoming a serious threat, delegates at a U.N.-sponsored conference said.
"This is the fastest growing form of organized crime," said Pino Arlacchi, head of the based U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (UNDCP), which is hosting the meeting.
He was opening the first ever International Seminar on the Trafficking of Human Beings where crime experts and human rights groups will wrestle with the scourge in which four million people are smuggled each year, according to UNDCP.
In the backdrop of the meeting were the images of such horrendous events as a container load of dozens of dead Chinese who were found at Britain's port of Dover this year, having died of suffocation on their journey from China.
"Trafficking in human beings is one of the most globalized markets in the world today," said Arlacchi, who won fame in the early 1990s for busting Italian mafia rings. "Almost no country is immune from it."
Calling the problem, a "new form of slavery," Arlacchi warned that traditional crime rings could increasingly turn to smuggling humans and away from other activities as many countries have few institutional means to fight it.
Most nations have focused on the problem of illegal immigrants and not the criminals taking advantage of them.
Delegates hope the meeting can start the work of adopting an international strategy to fight trafficking in humans to be adopted at a global forum in 2002.
Speakers at the meeting warned that the problem extends well beyond the international sex industry, to trafficking in children for adoption, women forced into marriage, humans smuggled for organs and outright slavery with forced work.
Above all, the lure of a new life in the United States or Europe, attracts thousands of poor into the clutches of international crime rings that charge thousands of dollars to ship their human cargoes.
Often the hopefuls end up in the shark-infested waters of the South China Sea, lost forever, said Hamish McCulloch, an expert in trafficking of humans at Interpol in Paris.
"Human beings are treated as nothing more than commodities by the traffickers," said McCulloch. He estimated the criminals behind human trafficking make $9 billion a year.
Host country Brazil, the world's fifth largest country with massive isolated farm lands, itself faces huge problems both with internal slavery and the illegal trafficking of women to Europe and the United States.
"Arlacchi will find a country with great problems of violence," Brazil's Justice Minister Jose Gregori told delegates, stressing that Brazil is ready for change.
"We have started to act, we are no longer standing still," he said.
Brazil's Labor Ministry has rescued almost 2,000 rural workers from slave labor in the past five years but human rights workers say the resources devoted to the work are sorely needed, leaving hundreds more to fall through the net.
The meeting's organizers said 75,000 Brazilian women work in Europe as prostitutes, most of them smuggled.
November 28, 2000
The continuing meth explosion - Texas
These are clandestine mom-and-pop operations that make what once was called "the poor man's cocaine" -- methamphetamine -- and their numbers are increasing in the United States at an alarming rate, law enforcement authorities say. The increase is riding expanded production of meth by Mexican cartels who operate "super labs" in Mexico and California and supply most of the meth that's sold in the United States, drug agents say. Increased demand and once-secret recipes that are simple and available on the Internet have created an opening for mom-and-pop labs to get a piece of the business, agents say.
From $60 in raw materials -- including anhydrous ammonia, lithium batteries and common cold tablets -- dealers can quickly produce more than $1,000 worth of meth, said Sgt. Robin Melton, a narcotics investigator for the Wise County Sheriff's Department. Usually sold in clear-plastic baggies for about $100 a gram, meth cooks can quickly recoup their costs.
The trend "is just starting to hit Texas," said Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Guy Hargreaves, who is based in Washington, D.C.
The number of meth labs seized in Texas climbed from 33 in 1997 to 181 in 1999, the DEA said. Through October, 180 labs have been seized this year.
Drug investigators say the labs are beginning to appear in the southern half of the state, recently turning up in the Houston area for the first time.
Those numbers are small, however, compared with the number of seizures in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri. There, authorities say, Texans can glimpse a full-blown problem that could be developing here. Like old-time moonshiners, small-time meth producers in that three-state region set up their labs in remote rural areas.
Last year, seizures of clandestine meth labs totaled 396 in Oklahoma, 334 in Arkansas and 438 in Missouri, according to local, state and federal law enforcement reports that were channeled to the DEA.
Agencies have no clear estimate of the human suffering related to meth use. Several meth "cooks" are killed each year while mixing the explosive ingredients in the synthetic drug, the DEA says. The National Institute on Drug Abuse warns that meth "is a powerfully addictive stimulant associated with serious health conditions, including memory loss, aggression, psychotic behavior, and potential heart and brain damage; it also contributes to increased transmission of hepatitis and HIV/AIDS."
Officials say that as the problem develops in Texas, they expect an increase in abuse and neglect cases in users' families, spiraling costs for law enforcement and environmental cleanup needed at lab sites, and increased addiction that will strain drug rehabilitation programs.
Long-term use can cause skin lesions, weight loss, rotting teeth and bouts of paranoia that can lead to abusive behavior, said Jane Maxwell of the Texas Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse.
"I think that this generation is forgetting that speed kills; they're forgetting about the violence associated with it and the physical abuse that comes with the paranoia," Maxwell said. "And it takes a toll on the human body. You're injecting some pretty toxic chemicals."
Users come from all socioeconomic backgrounds.
Low-income users are more numerous because meth is cheaper than other drugs, said Sabina Stern, program coordinator for the Collin County Substance Abuse program.
"In my experience, they're adult males from their late teens on up," Stern said. "They're undereducated and underemployed." But meth is no longer the "poor man's cocaine," as it was once known. Meth now cuts across socioeconomic classes -- from pickup-driving good ol' boys to Internet Web site technicians in Silicon Valley who reportedly drop it in their morning coffee to keep them awake after working or partying all night. The front lines in the battle against meth labs are in rural locales such as Wise, Denton and Johnson counties, where the labs flourish because of access to supplies of anhydrous ammonia fertilizer, a key ingredient in homemade meth.
"The methamphetamine problem is worse than we've ever seen," said Kirk Beauchamp, commander of the North Central Texas Narcotics Task Force, which covers Wise, Denton and Collin counties.
"It is hitting rural areas like Wise County especially hard because they can steal the ammonia from farmers, ranchers or local co-ops, and there's usually little or no security," Beauchamp said.
Wise County, just northwest of Tarrant County, and the western half of Denton County were among the first areas in Texas to notice the new wave of meth labs. Investigators have seized an average of one lab a week over the past four months. In Fort Worth, officials have been averaging four a week. And Tarrant County's narcotics task force saw the amount of meth seized in the last year climb from 20 pounds to more than 70 pounds. Meth is usually sold in one-gram doses.
Wise County authorities believe that they are identifying only a fraction of the clandestine operations. Because the ingredients can fit anywhere -- inside a recreational vehicle, a kitchen counter or a field in the middle of nowhere -- it's almost impossible to catch the meth cooks in the act of concocting a batch.
DPS spokesman Tom Vinger said it's generally accepted that the number of clandestine labs has increased sharply because meth is so much simpler and faster to make, with recipes readily available for free on the Internet.
Hargreaves said it doesn't take a genius to make the drug.
Every ingredient used in the so-called "Nazi meth" method -- except the chemical fertilizer -- can be found in retail stores. These include common cold remedies containing pseudoephedrine, rock salt, ether and engine starter fluid. The old method required a knowledge of chemistry; "meth cooks" jealously guarded their recipes and required a much longer time -- a week to 10 days -- to make a batch that can now be made in a few hours.
The name "Nazi" meth stems from one of the first speed cooks to be caught in southwestern Missouri, Hargreaves said. The cook placed a recipe on a letterhead that included a Nazi eagle insignia and a swastika.
"I don't know if the guy was a white supremacist or not, but the name stuck," he said.
The name does not stem from the use of meth by the German army in World War II, although the Nazis and the Allies used the drug to keep soldiers energized for battle or other duties, Hargreaves said.
Methamphetamine is as addictive as cocaine, according to the DEA. But while crack-cocaine binges rarely last longer than 72 hours, a meth binge can last as long as two weeks before a user finally "crashes." There have been few accounts of violence associated with meth use in Texas. But Child Protective Services officials say neglect cases within families are increasing.
Families that are involved with meth tend to be disorganized, CPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said. "These families are not providing care to their children.
"In one case, we had a young father that wasn't abusing his children but was abusing his wife," Meisner said. "By all previous accounts, before he became addicted to methamphetamine, he was a stable father with no history of violence."
Meth makers can also harm their neighbors by accidentally by starting fires while manufacturing meth or by producing toxic gases.
This year, Collin County has recorded three structural fires triggered by the volatile mix of chemicals used in the labs, Collin County Fire Marshal Steve Dissenbaugh said.
"The issue of public safety is one of the most important issues involving these mom-and-pop labs," Hargreaves said. "It's one of the reasons why you should care. Because there may be the equivalent of a pipe bomb in a neighbor's house."
Officials also voice concerns about the labs' effect on the environment.
Local and state law enforcement agencies in North Texas have already seen a substantial increase in cleanup costs paid generally with federal funds. Through October, $489,000 had been spent to clean 171 lab sites. Last year, $267,000 was spent to clean up 85 sites; in 1998, $5,000 was spent to clean one site.
Cleanup is essential, Joseph Corcoran, special agent in charge of the DEA's St. Louis division, told Congress last August during testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime. Corcoran told the panel that "the chemical contamination of the hazardous waste contained in these labs ... poses a serious danger to our nation's environment. Each pound of methamphetamine generated in a clandestine lab can result in as much as 5 pounds of toxic waste, which clandestine lab operators routinely dump into our nation's streams, rivers and sewage systems ...
"Because of the possibility of explosions and direct contact with toxic fumes and hazardous chemicals, law enforcement officers who raid clandestine drug labs are now required to take special hazardous materials handling training." Graduates of the DEA's Clandestine Lab School in Quantico, Va., each receive more than $2,000 in safety gear, he said.
Last year, the DEA exhausted $11 million budgeted to clean up 3,800 seized labs nationwide and has raised its budget this year to $13.5 million. They have spent more than $5 million to train state and local law enforcement to handle cleanup after a lab is seized.
The EPA considers the chemicals from the labs hazardous materials and requires officers to be trained in the use of special suits and to wear those suits when handling the labs.
Danger from chemicals hasn't stopped meth cooks from attempting to steal anhydrous ammonia from farmers' storage tanks. In July 1999, a 46-year-old man suffered chemical burns while attempting to steal anhydrous ammonia from a farmers' co-op near Cross Plains in Callahan County, about 130 miles west of Fort Worth. When the valve was broken, a vapor cloud formed and burned the man's skin and lungs, Callahan County Sheriff Eddie Curtis said.
And although it is illegal to carry the ammonia in anything except a regulation container, officers frequently find the fertilizer stored in containers such as milk jugs and thermoses.
Last year, the narcotics task force caught several people suspected of being meth lab operators on Paul Wood's ranch near Boonsville in southwestern Wise County. That seemed to deter others from trespassing for a while.
But after more than a year without the fertilizer, Wood recently found evidence of someone having tampered with a valve on a large ammonia tank.
"I think someone was out here trying to get some," Wood said, "but they didn't even have the sense to look at the gauge and see it was empty."
November 20, 2000
Yakuza Organizations
Organizations
Yamaguchi-Gumi
Sumiyoshi-Rengo
Inagawa-Kai
Ichiwa-Kai
Matsuba-Kai
Nippon Kokusui-Kai
Dai Nippon Heiwa-Kai
Toa Yuai Jigyo Kumiai
Chinese Triads
|
14 K Group
|
Wo Group
|
Miscellaneous
|
Big Four Group
|
Chiu Cho Group
|
14K Chung
|
Wo Hop To
|
Kwong Hung
|
Chuen Chi Wo
|
Chung Sun Tong
|
14K Chung Yee Tang
|
Wo Kao Chi
|
Kwong Luen Shing
|
Chuen Yat Chi
|
Fuk Yee Hing
|
14K Hau
|
Wo Kwan Lok
|
Kwong Shing
|
Luen Kung Lok
|
Hoi Luk Fung
|
14K Kia
|
Wo Lee Kwan
|
Kwong Song Tong
|
Luen Lok Tong
|
King Yee
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14K Lun
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November 14, 2000
THE MEXICANS
The United States has an estimated seven hundred thousand hard core heroin addicts who must engage in some form of criminal activity every day to pay for their addiction.This crime for drugs scenario costs Americans billions of dollars a year.
The Republic of Mexico is now and has been for the past half century a principal supplier of America's heroin.
Documents that we have obtained from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) state that Mexico is Latin America's second largest cultivator of the opium poppy and their net harvet is about forty six metric tons a year.
The single product processed from the poppy is black tar heroin which is the most popular form of the narcotic sought by users in the Western United States.
Three Mexican based organizations control all heroin movement across the U.S. Southwest border. These groups are the Arellano-Felix brothers, Miguel Caro-Quintero, and elements of the Juarez organization.
Mexican heroin distributors within the United States are generally Mexican nationals with families and/or geographic ties to the states of Durango, Michoacan, Nuevo Leon and Sinaloa.
While these groups control distribution at the wholesale level Hispanic and other street gangs throughout America handle the retail sales.
In the San Francisco-Oakland area Mexican traffickers sell heroin to prison based gangs such as the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) who also control a significant share of the distribution of the drug on the streets.
LaEme means Mexican Mafia and this forty four year old prison and street gang is a major player in the criminal structure of the Western United States.
California has the third largest prison system in the world with over 125,000 inmates.
With its estimated membership of between 250 and 1,500 LaEme is alleged to control drugs, gambling, extortion and prostitution throughout the entire California correctional system.
The two men who share the leadership of LaEme are Benjamin "Topo"
Peters and Ruben "Tupi" Hernandez. Below them are local bosses who supervise the average gang members.
The Mexican Mafia reaches out from behind the penitentiary walls to East Los Angeles where it taxes the drug sales of some Latino street gangs and controls their day to day activities.
Other government documents advise that Mexico is the hub for the transshipment of the tons of cocaine that arrive regularly from Colombia and which is destined for delivery in the United States.
Several Mexican based syndicates control the coke distribution.
The most powerful is in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua and is headed by Vincente Carrillio-Fuentes. Number two are brothers Benjamin and Ramon Arellano-Felix who are located in the border town of Tijuana. Number three is the organization of Miguel Caro-Quintero which is headquartered in the State of Sonora.
Methamphetamine smuggling into the United States from Mexico is controlled by the same gangs who dominate the trafficking in other illict narcotics i.e.: heroin, marijuana and cocaine in collusion with their California based relatives and business associates.
Also to be found in Mexico is the Amezcua-Contreras organization who are one of the largest importers of ephedrine (a meth base).
These international criminals who have been in business since 1988 operate out of Guadalajara, Mexico but are part of a network that involves other gangs all along the border.
The Pineda-Ochoa crime family which is based in Acapulco/Guerrero,
Mexico has established resources in Southern California and is involved in the trafficking of meth, cocaine and heroin.
Their distribution system runs from Los Angeles to West Palm Beach, Florida, Atlanta, Chicago, Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon.
The Mendoza/Valencia crime families are headquartered in El Aguaje, Michoacan, Mexico but beginning in 1990 they have created a successful meth distribution network based in the cities of Santa Ana and Riverside, California.
Their operations extend to Seattle, Phoenix, Chicago and various locations in Texas, New York and Florida.
The Mendoza and Valencia families are also dealers in cocaine, heroin and marijuana.
Mexico is the primary foreign source for marijuana imported into the United States.
Cannabis is cultivated in every state in Mexico but most heavily in the western states of Durango, Jalisco, Nayarit, Michoacan, Oaxaca, Sinaloa and Sonora.
The local, state and Federal government sytems of the Republic of Mexico are corrupt. Historically police officers, prosecutors, judges, governors, military staff officers and, at times, the office of the President have been under investigation for being on the payroll of the nation's drug lords who over many decades have shot, tortured, and murdered thousands of their fellow Mexicans and a number of American law enforcement officers.
As a new American President takes office the Colombian cartels are working side-by-side with Mexican organized crime groups to ship ton after ton of illict drugs across the border into United States.
Will there be any changes? Only time will tell.
What is interesting to us is that the U.S. Department of Defense has a yearly budget of almost three hundred billion dollars while the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) receives slightly less than two billion. The question is which "wars" are more important to the health, saftey and welfare of Americans?
The new President of Mexico has announced that he intends to do something about his country's drug problem but our prediction is that there might be some cosmetic changes, but sadly, no more than that.
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