DEA Busts 'Home-Delivery' Heroin 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 aliens, according to senior drug enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity before the official announcement.
The investigation has produced at least 138 arrests in 15 cities, from Charleston, S.C., to Los Angeles, based on 10 federal indictments and state charges, the officials said.
No arrests were made in Mexico but the investigation is continuing, officials said.
Known as Operation Black Gold Rush, the investigation was being described at a news conference here by Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher and deputy DEA administrator Michele Leonhart.
It's alleged that the ring grew its own poppies and refined them in Mexico before smuggling them into the United States in an unusually pure form of black tar heroin, CBS Radio News' John Hartge reports.
Officials gave this account of how the ring operated:
Agents seized more than $500,000 in cash that constituted illegal profits from the operation.
The federal investigation began last November after a single heroin seizure and, in cooperation with state and local police, Tuesday's raids were designed to take down the ring's entire U.S. distribution system from regional sales directors down to street-level dealers.