Asian Drug Ring Crushed in N.Y.; Record Cache of 838 Pounds of Heroin Is Seized

FBI and police raids crushed a major Asian narcotics conspiracy and confiscated the largest cache of heroin in U.S. history--838 pounds, enough to supply half of New York City’s 200,000 addicts for a year--authorities said Tuesday.

The investigation, code named Operation White Mare, culminated in 45 arrests in New York, Buffalo, Los Angeles, Detroit, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, Singapore and Hong Kong.

Prosecutors said those taken into custody included Kok Leung Woo, a 71-year-old prominent resident and politician in New York’s Chinatown, who was charged with being the ring’s leader and chief broker. Authorities also recovered $3 million in cash. The heroin was valued at $1 billion.

Tops French Connection Case

“It is the largest seizure ever in the United States,” Assistant FBI Director James Fox told a news conference in Manhattan. By comparison, about 200 pounds of heroin were seized when the well-publicized French Connection heroin ring was broken in 1971.

“This won’t win the war, but it was a remarkable hit,” said Richard Condon, New York’s first deputy police commissioner.

Fox said Woo was a leading member of Chinatown’s business community, where he was a former member of a local Democratic club. He was arrested at his liquor store in Manhattan.

Woo “knows both suppliers of heroin in Hong Kong and Singapore, couriers who import the heroin into the United States and Canada, and distributors of the drugs in the United States,” a complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn charged. “He and his partner, David Kwong, bring together those suppliers and purchasers for the purposes of culminating substantial heroin deals.”

Kwong Chock Chiu, alias David Kwong, also was arrested.

The complaint said the investigation began about 18 months ago with a tip from an informant.

During the investigation, according to the court papers, Woo and Kwong on Dec. 8, 1987, sold an FBI undercover agent in New York about a pound of high purity heroin worth $35,000. On July 27, 1988, 22 kilograms of cocaine were seized in Detroit as a result of surveillance of Kwong and an associate. Last Oct. 2, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police recovered six pounds of heroin from associates of Woo and Kwong. And on Jan. 19, 30 pounds of heroin were confiscated in Hong Kong from the conspiracy’s suppliers.

The court papers said from last March until the present, hundreds of drug-related telephone calls were intercepted in the United States, Hong Kong and Canada.

“These conversations, which are often coded, reveal a worldwide conspiracy to import heroin into the United States from Hong Kong and/or Singapore, utilizing several different methods,” prosecutors charged.

As the investigation broadened, most of the FBI’s 100 Chinese-American agents participated. The task force was bolstered by Chinese-speaking New York detectives. On Monday evening, more than 100 heavily armed police and FBI agents raided three locations in New York City.

Fox said after the $3 million was seized at the first location in Queens, the agents found 838 pounds of heroin packed in a wheelbarrow and lawn-mower tires at the second spot they raided. At the same time, police were conducting raids in Singapore, Hong Kong and Canada.

Prosecutors said the Southeast Asian heroin was shipped from Hong Kong to Los Angeles before it was sent by truck to New York for distribution to Boston and other Eastern cities.

Authorities estimate New York City is home to 200,000 heroin users, half the heroin addicts in the nation.