Drug-Ring Suspect Extradited From Mexico : Crime: Arrest ends a 20-year effort to catch him. He is accused of masterminding a vast smuggling operation from an Orange County ranch.

Daniel James Fowlie, the alleged patriarch of a vast drug-smuggling operation at a remote Orange County ranch, was extradited to the United States from Mexico on Monday, ending a 20-year effort by law enforcement authorities to apprehend him.

Fowlie, 57, wanted on 26 drug charges filed in U.S. District Court, arrived at John Wayne Airport about 5:30 p.m.

A court in Mazatlan, Mexico, which handled Fowlie’s appeals, upheld his extradition to the United States on June 22 despite his 3-year-old claim that his return would violate the Mexican Constitution. Authorities processed the final paper work last week for his return.

Fowlie was turned over on Monday to American authorities at a prison in La Paz, Mexico, where more than 20 Mexican officials held a formal extradition proceeding during which they announced a new era of cooperation between American and Mexican law enforcement authorities in the war on drugs.

It is believed to be the first formal extradition from Baja California to the United States in about 100 years, U.S. federal agents said.

“We are very happy,” said Wylie Cox, supervising special agent in charge of the FBI’s Santa Ana office. “This brings to a resolution a case that we have put a lot of time into.”

Fowlie, once confident that he would never be extradited, is accused of smuggling hundreds of thousands of pounds of marijuana and lesser amounts of cocaine into the United States through Rancho del Rio, a 213-acre spread off Ortega Highway.

President George Bush turned the rustic property into a backdrop for a nationally televised address on drug abuse last summer.

Federal agents say the ranch, controlled by Orange County since it was seized, was part of a nationwide smuggling operation with contacts on the East Coast, in the Midwest and in Canada. They allege that Fowlie laundered the proceeds of his drug sales through a now-defunct shell company called Tenco International Petroleum Corp. with offices in South Laguna Beach and in the Netherlands. Fowlie has said his company had legitimate oil shipping contracts with the government of Nigeria.

Fowlie’s return ends almost 20 years of investigations that have led federal, state and local authorities from Orange County to Central America and Europe in pursuit of him.

In contesting his extradition, Fowlie said the charges against him were generated by three convicted drug dealers who “made up stories” to save themselves. He also contended that Mexican law does not allow the statements of convicted felons as the basis for criminal charges.

“They have no tape recordings, no drug buys, no nothing on me,” Fowlie said this year in an interview with The Times, describing those who implicated him as “three-time losers and full-time liars.”

He and his lawyers contend that the charges are exaggerated and that a search of Rancho del Rio in 1985 might have been improper, which could force the suppression of key evidence against him.

Fowlie has spent much of the last three years at the Centro de Readaptacion Social, a prison on the dusty outskirts of La Paz in Baja California. The Times reported in March that during his imprisonment, Fowlie’s captors freed him repeatedly to go marlin fishing, visit his beachfront house and work on real estate projects in Cabo San Lucas, a popular haven for American sportsmen.