O.C.-Based Sting Targets Growing Meth Trade

In what was said to be the largest crackdown yet on methamphetamine cooks in California, authorities on Monday began arresting 50 people from San Diego to Stanislaus County, wrapping up an Orange-based sting operation that sold $1.5 million worth of chemicals used to concoct the drug.

By day’s end, roughly 200 law enforcement officials, who fanned out at dawn across the state, had arrested 25 people. The remaining suspects will be taken into custody this week, authorities said.

During the six-month operation, police said they closed more than a dozen meth labs, seized 30 guns and 260 pounds of speed with a street value of $12 million.

Authorities said the far-flung arrests highlight the spreading problem of methamphetamine, which has replaced cocaine as the illicit drug of choice in California.

The just-concluded operation has helped stem the frenzied and hazardous production of speed in makeshift labs that is increasingly placing children, neighborhoods and motel tenants at risk, authorities said.

During a news conference at the Anaheim Police Department on Monday, police chiefs from several Orange County cities stood proudly before a display of guns, meth and ingredients used to cook the drug.

From Sacramento, Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren issued a statement saying the bust “will make a difference in Orange County and the surrounding area. We have placed one more brick but have a long wall to build to keep these dangerous drugs away.”

Last year, officials with the state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement seized 465 “dangerous meth labs, or one every 19 hours,” Lungren said. “This year we are on a pace to seize 600.

“Each one, regardless of whether they can produce a few ounces, or 200 pounds at a time, are volatile, producing deadly fumes, and toxic waste . . . [and] often are operated in houses or apartments where children are present.”

John D. Miles, special agent in charge of the state Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement in Orange County, said the arrests would make a “large dent” in the growing methamphetamine trade in Southern California.

“By going right to the labs and seizing people who actually make it, we’re trying to stop meth at the source,” Miles said.

Miles said it was the first time that authorities had posed as suppliers of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine--two ingredients used in the manufacture of methamphetamine--to snare the operators of the illegal labs.

Dubbed “Buyer Beware,” the operation employed agents from 25 law enforcement agencies in Orange, Los Angeles and Riverside counties who staffed a storefront operation in an industrial complex near the intersection of Main Street and Collins Avenue in Orange.

The store, which operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, was furnished with a desk, a money counter, and stockpiles of over-the-counter cold medicine--known as pseudoephedrine and the chemically similar ephedrine--which agents peddled for about $1,000 a pound.

The drugs are key ingredients in the process used to make methamphetamine. Meth cooks used to rely on powdered ephedrine to make the powerful drug, known on the streets as “crank” or “speed.”

But as federal officials have moved to tighten the regulation of ephedrine sales, cooks have turned to pseudoephedrine, found in over-the-counter cold medicines and increasingly sold at retail outlets such as gas stations, antique stores and head shops.

After turning over the ingredients to the drug cooks, police followed them to their makeshift labs.

Seventeen people were arrested during the course of the operation, but many others were either not arrested or released on their own recognizance so as not to jeopardize the sting, Hudson said.

“People were coming down here from Stanislaus County to buy,” said Gary Hudson, who heads the Orange County methamphetamine enforcement team for the state Department of Justice. “People were coming down from everywhere. Word of mouth is the best advertising.”

Monday, police seized four guns and an additional 80 pounds of speed.

All 21 suspects taken into custody Monday were Latinos, authorities said, noting that the arrests signaled a change since the early days of the drug’s popularity, when biker gangs controlled its manufacture and distribution.

Now the big-batch meth cooks in California are linked to organized Mexican drug families, law enforcement sources said.

Miles said many of the suspects were linked to four groups, which he did not name.

Carl Armbrust, a deputy district attorney who heads the Orange County district attorney’s narcotics unit, said authorities believe that meth dealers were “operating with cocaine money out of Mexico.”

He related an incident during the operation when a drug cook walked into the storefront with a box that he said contained $41,000. Agents counted the cash, realized the box contained $47,000, and returned the extra $6,000. After handing over a supply of ephedrine, authorities followed the man to a Fresno location where he was arrested, Armbrust said.

Cooks came to the strip-mall office with “hundreds of thousands of dollars in paper bags, grocery bags, gym bags, money belts and stuffed in their pockets,” Hudson said. One came with $30,000 in counterfeit food stamps, which agents refused to take. The man returned the next day with cash, having unloaded the food stamps on an unsuspecting buyer.

Hudson said most will be charged with conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine, manufacturing, and possession with the intent to manufacture. Some face up to 30 counts. If convicted, they face between three to seven years in jail.

Not everyone who showed up at the undercover shop wanted to buy chemicals for speed. A man who must have dialed the wrong telephone number reached undercover agents and asked in Spanish to buy lettuce.

Believing that lettuce might be Spanish slang for pseudoephedrine, agents tried to go through with the deal. But the man bolted when he heard the asking price.

“He . . . said that he just wanted to buy lettuce,” Hudson said.