Man Whose Drink Made Revelers Ill Enters Guilty Plea

Ten months after his “natural” drink loosed pandemonium at a New Year’s Eve party in downtown Los Angeles, a San Diego man pleaded guilty Monday to a federal mislabeling charge and explained to a judge what was in the mystery brew.

Daniel Bricker, 30, was charged with misbranding a food or drug product, a charge that could have landed him in federal prison for up to three years.

Under a plea bargain reached with the U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego, Bricker will serve no more than six months in custody, either behind bars or in home detention.

Bricker distributed about 900 vials of his product, called “fX,” free of charge to revelers at the Dec. 31 “rave” at the Grand Olympic Auditorium. The concert, dubbed “In Seventh Heaven,” featured dozens of deejays playing techno music and drew a flamboyant crowd of more than 10,000.

At least 31 people believed to have consumed the liquid were hospitalized with nausea and respiratory trouble, then released. A melee erupted as police closed the event early, and officers fired rubber bullets to disperse the crowd.

Investigators seized more than 9,000 vials of the liquid, labeled “Cherry fX Bombs,” “Orange fX Rush” or “Lemon fX Drops.” The labels falsely listed a plant extract, a relaxant called kava kava, among the ingredients.

Federal investigators said Monday that Bricker probably intended to make the liquid with kava kava, but was unable to have it shipped from his supplier in time. Instead, he used 1,4 Butanediol--an industrial solvent that bears some similarities to the popular rave drug gammahydroxybutyrate (GHB).

Lab tests also revealed that Bricker mixed in heavy amounts of caffeine, although he left that off the label.

What drove him to brew “fX,” authorities said Monday in their fullest explanation of the case, was desperation.

Bricker, a chiropractor described by authorities as a “wannabe” in the rave scene, had taken over his family business, Bricker Laboratories of Escondido, after his father died in early 1996.

The company, which sold health foods and vitamins, was failing badly. Bricker decided to tap a new market: the rave scene. He developed a formula for “fX,” a product he promised would create a safe “natural” high.

He planned to sell it for $20 per vial. But first he had to market it.

And to make a splash with consumers, his lawyer said in an interview Monday, there was only one place to go: the annual “In Seventh Heaven” concert on New Year’s Eve.

“It was the mother of all raves,” lawyer Eugene G. Iredale said.

There was one problem: Bricker’s supplier couldn’t fill his order for kava kava.

“He had a date with destiny on New Year’s Eve, and come hell or high water, he was going to make that date,” said an agent with the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Criminal Investigations.

With a little research, Bricker found a substitute for kava kava: the industrial solvent. He believed that it would have similar psycho-pharmacological effects, Iredale said.

He purchased a 55-gallon drum of the solvent and had it delivered to an associate, who repackaged it in smaller containers, labeled it as kava kava and delivered it to the firm hired to mix “fX” according to Bricker’s formula, his lawyer said.

In test versions, Iredale said, Bricker found that some people who ingested “fX” suffered “slight nausea.” But he decided to distribute it at the Olympic anyway.

Iredale said his client did not intend to harm anyone, and noted that the label on Bricker’s product clearly instructs consumers not to take it on a full stomach.

Iredale said he believes that anyone who became sick after ingesting “fX” had drunk alcohol or taken other drugs.

Since the rave, Bricker has sold the family business and filed for protection from creditors under federal bankruptcy laws. He is also the target of a lawsuit filed by the event promoters, who are being sued by the Grand Olympic Auditorium over lost revenue.

Bricker is to be sentenced Feb. 2 by U.S. District Judge Leland Nielsen. His associate, Michael Moffett, pleaded guilty Oct. 24 to a charge of misbranding and was sentenced to two years’ supervised probation.

Iredale said Bricker was in a rush to distribute “fX” at the New Year’s Eve rave because, while he did not plan to charge customers for it that night, “at least he could generate goodwill in the market.”