11 Held in County in High-Tech Drug Bust : Worldwide, 10-Week Manhunt Results in Arrests of 166 Fugitives

U.S. marshals ended a worldwide Computer Age manhunt that resulted in the arrest of 166 fugitives--including 11 in San Diego County--some of whom had been on the run from drug smuggling and dealing cases for 14 years, officials announced Wednesday.

A force of 104 deputies arrested 44 other people on a variety of drug-related charges during the 10-week effort by the U.S. Marshals Service.

In San Diego County, marshals arrested 11 fugitives wanted for a variety of federal narcotics violations, said Deputy Marshal Robert T. Lloyd Jr. In addition, Lloyd said, 11 other fugitives wanted in San Diego County were taken into custody elsewhere in the nation, including one nabbed in Riverside County. Some of those arrested had been wanted in San Diego County since as far back as 1973.

While Lloyd called the nationwide operation a success, he acknowledged his disappointment that no so-called “priority one” fugitives--those considered dangerous and suspected of serious narcotics violations in the San Diego area--were not apprehended.

“We didn’t manage to find any of our priority fugitives,” Lloyd said. “Some of them are more notorious, and naturally, it’s disappointing, but we’ve developed some good leads.”

Others Sought Abroad

In addition to those arrested in the United States, Lloyd said, another fugitive wanted locally was taken into custody in a foreign country and could eventually be extradited to San Diego. Citing security reasons, Lloyd declined to identify the suspect or the country where he was being held.

Lloyd also said that investigators were trying to track down leads on four other fugitives who are believed to be living outside the United States.

He said that, in an unexpected side benefit, federal agents, while trying to arrest one fugitive in El Cajon, stumbled on two people who were allegedly engaged in the manufacture of methamphetamines. The deputies contacted El Cajon police, who later arrested the two.

In Los Angeles, officials arrested more fugitives--18--than in any other city, according to Sam Cicchino, chief of the U.S. Marshals Service there.

“After a period of time, they figured they were safe and they figured wrong,” Cicchino said.

The operation cleared an additional 61 cases nationwide by finding that some fugitives already were in jail, others were in countries such as Colombia and Italy, and some had been killed. One body found last month was mummified in a sleeping bag buried in a shallow grave in Oklahoma.

From their base on the ninth floor of San Francisco’s Federal Building, deputy marshals traveled to the Cayman Islands, France, Belize and elsewhere. They used detailed computer data bases, informants’ tips and other techniques to capture their quarry in all regions of the nation.

Most of the fugitives were dealing drugs when they were arrested, authorities here said. Nearly half of the 166 people arrested have been freed on bail, said John L. Pascucci, a senior inspector for the Marshals Service who coordinated the operation.

Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III announced the effort at a conference of the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force in St. Louis. In a statement released in Washington, Meese said: “What we have demonstrated in this effort is that these fugitives can run but they can’t hide, not when good criminal investigators are given the task of tracking down these criminals.”

$1 Million in Assets Seized

The arrests marked the first nationally coordinated effort to bring drug fugitives into custody, said Stanley E. Morris, director of the U.S. Marshals Service. Agents seized more than $1 million in assets, including cash, drugs, guns and four houses in Houston from which crack cocaine was allegedly sold.

In Texas, a motorcycle gang member suspected of shooting a Texas police officer in 1986 was arrested. In Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a fugitive who was arrested turned out to be an informant for the FBI, which was said to have ignored the warrant because of the information the fugitive provided. In San Francisco, a fugitive was arrested at a doctor’s office where his pregnant wife was headed for a checkup, Deputy Marshal Jan Axthelm said.

The operation code-named Warrant Apprehension Narcotics Team, was a year in the planning. The Marshals Service started by identifying roughly 3,800 fugitives from federal drug charges and asked U.S. attorneys across the nation to select those who were the most wanted.

Using a final list of 700, marshals fed into their computer intricate details about each fugitive, including birthdates, criminal and family backgrounds, friends, business partners and physical descriptions. Such information made it easier for investigators to find patterns in the fugitives’ movements.

The service set up shop in Los Angeles, San Diego, Miami, Houston, Chicago, New York and Baltimore, with the hub in San Francisco, the location of the main computer and its coordinators. New leads were fed into the computer, and deputies were assigned to pursue them.

One computer profile showed, for example, that Iran Michael Kesselman favored leather suits and was in and out of Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Francisco. Kesselman, 41, owned Leo Tiger Fashions, a clothing chain, and was wanted for more than three years on cocaine-smuggling charges in Britain. Deputies finally caught up with him in Hawaii, where he was arrested March 31 and is being held pending extradition.

Expanding Jurisdiction

The program is part of an effort by the U.S. Marshals Service to expand its jurisdiction to include federal drug fugitives. Currently, the Drug Enforcement Administration turns fugitive cases over to the FBI. The FBI, like the DEA, is swamped with new cases and has little time to track down fugitives. The Marshals Service estimated that the number of federal drug fugitives increased by more than 600 in the last two years.

One such fugitive was Humberto Calero, 43, who was arrested at a San Francisco hotel where he had allegedly come to recruit pilots to ferry drugs into the country. He had been a fugitive since 1984, when he failed to show up to start serving a five-year prison term for his involvement as a leader in the so-called Frogmen case, in which smugglers would swim drugs into port from a Colombian ship in San Francisco Bay. An estimated 343 pounds of cocaine was brought ashore in one such operation.

Calero had been free on $1-million bail, as had three other fugitives who were arrested. The average bond of the 166 fugitives who had jumped bail was about $80,000.

“What’s $80,000 to someone who makes $33 million a year? They view it as a cost of doing business,” Pascucci said.

Times staff writer Hector Gutierrez contributed to this story from San Diego.