Record Cache of Ecstasy Drug Seized in L.A.

Federal agents in Los Angeles announced Wednesday that they had seized $40 million worth of the hallucinogenic party drug Ecstasy, the largest such confiscation in U.S. history and an ominous sign of the increasing popularity and profitability of the so-called club drug.

The 1,096-pound shipment was seized Saturday at Los Angeles International Airport after arriving on an Air France flight from Paris. Authorities said that they tracked the shipment--in 15 boxes labeled as pens, pencils and tablets--for weeks via wiretaps and seized faxes and that it probably originated in Amsterdam.

Three people alleged to be linked to a ring that imported the drug from Europe were arrested Tuesday in Los Angeles. They are Ryu “Steve” Jiha, 35, a South Korean citizen who lives in Granada Hills, and Mark Edward Belin, 28, and Damon Todd Kidwell, 29, both of Los Angeles.

A fourth suspect, alleged ringleader Tamer Adel Ibrahim, 26, of Los Angeles, is a fugitive. He is described in court documents as a “high-level Ecstasy trafficker who imports massive amounts of the drug from the Netherlands to Los Angeles for distribution across the United States.”

At a new conference in his downtown Los Angeles offices, U.S. Atty. Alejandro N. Mayorkas said the ring had “tentacles that reached throughout the world.”

He painted Saturday’s seizure as evidence of a vast upswing in production of Ecstasy that threatens to cause serious physical and emotional damage across the country. U.S. Customs Service officials said the agency has seized nearly 8 million doses of the drug in the last 10 months, more than twice the 3.5 million tablets confiscated during 1999.

Demand for the drug has surged in the United States, and Ecstasy is especially sought after by teenagers who frequent nightclubs and all-night dance parties called raves. It has gained a reputation as a “feel-good” drug but can damage long-term memory and cause death.

Los Angeles has become a hub of Ecstasy smuggling because of its high volume of international flights and its status as the center of the underground rave youth culture, authorities said. Investigators have intercepted several large shipments of the drug in Southern California, including a 700-pound cache in December, which at the time was the largest Ecstasy seizure in U.S. history.

Many of the law enforcement actions have involved the ring allegedly led by Ibrahim, authorities said. The December seizure resulted in the arrests of five people, including John Ibrahim, 22, of Los Angeles, said to be the cousin of Tamer Ibrahim.

Customs agents also recently broke up a separate Los Angeles ring that in two years of operation reportedly smuggled about 9 million Ecstasy tablets into the country for distribution on the East and West coasts. Twenty-five people have been arrested in connection with that ring, which allegedly employed as many as 50 couriers who posed as tourists and business executives to smuggle the drug.

“Ecstasy is a new threat with the potential to cause great damage,” said Mark Trouville, a Drug Enforcement Administration special agent. “Its dangers are underrated because people are unaware of the long-term damage it causes. Young people in their prime learning years are losing significant memory capacity.”

Conscious of the potential to make tens of millions of dollars from the illicit drug, Ecstasy traffickers are coalescing into professional cartels and using increasingly sophisticated smuggling tactics, the agents said.

The drug, also known as MDMA, is synthetically produced and has been primarily manufactured in Amsterdam and other Western European cities. More recently, Trouville said, several Israeli syndicates have gained control of the European cartels.

The enticement for traffickers is obvious. A dose--or tablet--of Ecstasy can be produced for 15 to 25 cents in Europe and sold for $20 in the United States. In some Midwestern cities, a tablet might fetch $50.

The record-setting shipment seized Saturday contained about 2.1 million tablets, about a quarter of all the Ecstasy seized so far this year.

“This signals that Ecstasy smuggling has reached an astounding new level,” Raymond W. Kelly, commissioner of the Customs Service, said in a statement. “Capitalizing on increased demand, organized-crime groups are flooding our nation with Ecstasy at a rate never seen before.”

Federal agencies have had to quickly ratchet up their knowledge of the perils of Ecstasy and their enforcement efforts. Donnie Marshall, DEA administrator, said the agency will hold an international conference next week in Arlington, Va., to examine the use and distribution of the drug and “how to best attack this global problem through a combination of enforcement actions and public education.”

The drug is not legal in Europe and a recent crackdown by Dutch police reportedly forced lab operators to shift some production out of Amsterdam to other countries, including Belgium and Poland. Small amounts of Ecstasy are also reportedly being produced in Canada.

The impact of the spread of Ecstasy is also being felt in the nation’s emergency rooms. According to the Drug Awareness Warning Network, a hospital reporting group, use of Ecstasy resulted in 637 trips to emergency rooms in 1997, the latest year for which figures are available, compared with just 68 visits in 1993.

Ecstasy is a psychoactive drug that can short-circuit the body’s signals to the brain. Its use has been associated with a rapid heartbeat, loss of consciousness and seizures.