DEA Busts Nationwide Home Delivery Drug Ring

Federal agents arrested more than 130 alleged drug traffickers from coast to coast Tuesday who U.S. officials said smuggled heroin from Mexico and offered phone-up home delivery like a takeout pizza shop.

Beginning before dawn, Drug Enforcement Administration agents conducted arrest raids and searches, seeking up to 150 people, about half of them illegal immigrants, according to senior drug enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity before the official announcement.

By early afternoon, the investigation had produced 131 arrests in 15 cities, from Charleston, S.C., to Los Angeles, based on 10 federal indictments and state charges, the officials said.

Known as Operation Black Gold Rush, the investigation was being described at an afternoon news conference here by Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher and deputy DEA administrator Michele Leonhart. Officials gave this account of how the ring operated:

The ring grew its own poppies and refined them in Mexico and smuggled an unusually pure variety of black tar heroin across the U.S.-Mexican border, mostly in Arizona, with couriers on foot or in vehicles. Mexican black tar heroin, a dark and sticky substance, is usually only about 30-40 percent pure, well below the purity of Colombian heroin. But among the more than 37 pounds of heroin seized in this case, some was 85 percent pure," officials said.
Full Story Here