Man Held in Ecstasy Raid Had Immunity in Other Case

The man arrested last week in one of the largest seizures of the drug ecstasy in U.S. history is a textile importer who had previously been granted immunity in exchange for his testimony in a long-running investigation of the counterfeit clothing industry.

Benjamin Wizmann, 41, was arrested at his Hollywood Hills home last week on suspicion of importing almost half a million ecstasy tablets. Ecstasy is an anti-depressant illegal in this country but widely used at music raves, all-night electronic-music gatherings that are popular among teenagers and young adults.

Federal authorities intercepted the shipment at San Francisco International Airport. The 490,000 tablets were contained in three cardboard boxes labeled “cotton pants,” said Robert Stiriti, assistant agent in charge of the U.S. Customs Service office in San Francisco. The drug arrived on a flight from Paris, although agents do not know where it was manufactured.

Wizmann is being held without bail and is expected to be indicted and returned to San Francisco this week. Other arrests are expected, authorities said.

Wizmann had been the target of a federal grand jury investigation into the apparel industry practice known as diversion, in which popular name-brand clothing is diverted from high-end retail shops to other sales outlets that manufacturers had declined to sell their clothing to. Name-brand clothing has even been diverted to other countries. Wizmann last year was granted immunity in return for testifying before that grand jury.

Within a few months of the immunity grant, however, he is alleged to have begun planning to import ecstasy and Viagra. Unfortunately for him, one of the people he contacted was a federal informant. The informant arranged the shipment and delivered a sample of it to Wizmann last week. Wizmann was arrested after he took possession of a rental car that contained the sample.

The ecstasy shipment was unusually large.

“It was a brazen move,” Stiriti said. “Shipments are usually concealed among other goods. These boxes contained nothing but the drugs.”

Use of ecstasy is expanding, Stiriti said, from large metropolitan areas to smaller towns throughout the country. It produces a state of euphoria and is not physically addictive.