Operation Sweet Tooth
Operation Triple Play
On November 17, 2005, DEA announced the culmination of “Operation Sweet Tooth,” a two-year, SOD-coordinated OCDETF investigation that targeted international Ecstasy and marijuana trafficking rings whose drug smuggling and money laundering operations ranged from the back alleys of the Far East to the neighborhood streets of Canada and the United States. It followed Operation Candy Box that dismantled an international ring importing one million MDMA tablets a month into Canada for distribution in the United States. Operation Sweet Tooth was comprised of DEA-led investigations in 12 separate U.S. judicial districts and resulted in the arrest of 291 individuals and the execution of 98 search warrants both in the United States and Canada. The seizures totaled 931,300 MDMA tablets, 1,777 pounds of marijuana, and $7.75 million in U.S. assets. The leaders of the criminal organizations targeted in Operation Sweet Tooth refined and improved on the methods used by those in the Operation Candy Box organization: the Operation Sweet Tooth organizations were responsible for distributing 1.5 million tablets of MDMA per month, equivalent to more than 22 percent of the estimated 8 metric tons of MDMA imported into the United States in 2003. Operation Sweet Tooth identified drug trafficking networks that imported MDMA powder into Canada, established clandestine pill press warehouses, and smuggled bulk quantities of MDMA tablets into the United States. The financial aspect of the investigation revealed that the drug trafficking syndicates laundered millions of dollars in drug proceeds through the use of bulk courier transport, money remitters and the Vietnamese underground banking system. Assistance provided by both the Vietnamese and Canadian authorities allowed Operation Sweet Tooth to identify the drug distribution and money laundering methods of the organizations.
With the September 28, 2006, culmination of “Operation Triple Play,” DEA announced the unsealing of charges in Manhattan federal court against 22 members of a massive Ecstasy-trafficking organization that smuggled more than $5 million worth of Ecstasy from Canada into the United States for resale. Nineteen defendants were arrested in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and one defendant was arrested in Canada. Law enforcement seized more than 50,000 Ecstasy pills worth more than $1 million, and over $100,000 in cash. According to a three-count indictment, since 2005, the criminal organization imported more than 250,000 Ecstasy pills — worth more than $5 million on New York City streets — from Canada into the United States for distribution. The organization was supplied by Jung Chao and Chung My Huong Nguyen, who were based in Canada and occasionally traveled into the United States to oversee the distribution of tens of thousands of Ecstasy pills. The indictment charged that Thuong Tri Tang, aka “Tang,” was the criminal organization’s primary distributor of Ecstasy in the United States. Tang had direct dealings with the sources of supply in Canada, receiving tens of thousands of Ecstasy pills at a time for distribution in the United States. After the Ecstasy pills were smuggled across the border from Canada into the United States, Tang arranged for the distribution of the organization’s pills to the distribution cells on the East Coast. The distribution cells then sold the Ecstasy to retail drug dealers for resale to users in the street, in clubs, and in brothels. Once the Ecstasy was sold in the United States, members of the organization arranged for the drug proceeds to be collected and laundered back to the organization’s sources of supply in Canada. The criminal organization stored the pills at self-storage facilities located in New Jersey. The Ecstasy pills were labeled with many different stamps or markings, including, among others: a cherry, the Versace and Louis Vitton logos, and a 6-point star.
Ecstasy Trafficker Extradited from Israel
Diversion and Prescription Drug Abuse
On March 6, 2006, Israeli national and notorious criminal Ze’ev Rosenstein was extradited and appeared in federal court in the Southern District of Florida to face charges he was at the center of a conspiracy to smuggle hundreds of thousands of Ecstasy tablets into the United States for illegal sale. A significant part of the case against Rosenstein, worked with the assistance of Israeli authorities and local U.S. authorities in Florida and New York, was based on the seizure of 700,000 Ecstasy pills in July 2001. Rosenstein’s indictment covered a two-year period during which he headed a sophisticated drug trafficking network whose operations spanned four continents and involved the shipment of well over one million Ecstasy pills to the United States. Administrator Tandy called him at the time, “the most infamous criminal in Israel.” The July 2001 seizure occurred after one of Rosenstein’s co-conspirators sold a sample of the Ecstasy pills to a confidential source in New York. Rosenstein pled guilty and was sentenced to 12 years in prison in January 2007.
National Drug Control Strategy Focus on Prescription Drugs Released March 1, 2004, the 2004 National Drug Control Strategy outlined the extent of prescription drug abuse in the United States and a coordinated drug strategy to confront the illegal diversion and abuse of prescription drugs. Data at the time indicated that prescription drug abuse, particularly of opioid pain killers, had increased at an alarming rate over the previous ten years:
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