Giant Ecstasy Ring Smashed by Worldwide Police Effort

Before it ended in a series of raids Wednesday, the hunt for the world’s biggest cartel trafficking in the designer drug Ecstasy took an international consortium of law enforcement agents from the rave clubs of Hollywood through a host of European cities.

For 15 months, the authorities--led by a Los Angeles-based team of FBI, DEA and Customs agents--played an elaborate cat-and-mouse game with Tamer Adel Ibrahim and his alleged associates. They watched as the young cadre of suspected traffickers traveled to Milan, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and elsewhere around the globe--even to Mexico, Israel and South Korea, allegedly to arrange deals.

Authorities believed the group to be perhaps the No. 1 wholesaler of a drug whose explosive growth among young people has alarmed those at the highest reaches of the U.S. Justice Department--especially because of new indications that Ecstasy may cause depression and significant brain damage among chronic users.

They said their concerns were confirmed, that wiretaps and surveillance showed that the cartel was engaged in a global enterprise, shipping literally millions of the tablets from various drops in Europe to Los Angeles, authorities said.

Ibrahim, a slight 26-year-old, allegedly ran the operation from a swank high-rise ocean-view apartment in Santa Monica while driving around town in a sleek black Range Rover, authorities say.

Capping the investigation, the Dutch National Police early Wednesday raided 17 locations in Amsterdam, arresting seven alleged co-conspirators and seizing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, as well as guns and other weapons.

And authorities in Washington and Los Angeles disclosed that Ibrahim was quietly taken into custody two months ago in connection with a shipment of more than 1.2 million Ecstasy tablets headed for Los Angeles. Ibrahim remains in custody in the Netherlands and couldn’t be reached for comment.

All told, the multinational dragnet, dubbed Operation Red Tide, has seized more than 4 million doses of the drug and arrested at least 22 suspects in six U.S. cities and four European countries since July. And an additional 18 people linked to Ibrahim’s operation have been arrested in various law enforcement operations around the world within the past year, authorities said.

“It’s the largest Ecstasy ring in the world that we know of, and we took them down,” said FBI Special Agent Matthew McLaughlin, a department spokesman in Los Angeles. “That’s significant.”

So significant, in fact, that top Justice Department officials said Wednesday that Ibrahim’s arrest and the dismantling of his alleged network will go a long way toward staunching the flow of the drug from manufacturing bases in Europe to ravenous users here in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the United States.

They praised the operation as a textbook example of how law enforcement agencies from various countries can band together to fight the increasingly global reach of major drug dealers.

“It shows how in the 21st century, there are no borders anymore--law enforcement agencies can now coordinate, investigate and pursue major drug traffickers around the globe,” said Michele Leonhart, special agent in charge of the DEA’s Los Angeles field division. “This is the first time we have seen such an international syndicate, and one worked by so many international law enforcement agencies.”

Stephen Wiley, assistant agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, described Operation Red Tide as “one of the most significant [drug] cases, in terms of the involvement of different law enforcement agencies, that the bureau has ever had.”

Even FBI Director Louis Freeh and Drug Enforcement Administration chief Donnie E. Marshall weighed in, saying the arrests and seizures underscore their efforts to make Ecstasy traffickers a top priority “regardless of where the suspects are in the world.”

Ecstasy’s proper name is methylene dioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA. The drug creates some mild hallucinatory effects similar to LSD but also creates a sense of well-being, euphoria and even empathy that makes it popular among all-night “ravers” and others seeking a communal experience.

Still Searching for Drug’s Manufacturer

In recent years, Ecstasy-related arrests and seizures have skyrocketed, from a few thousand tablets seized in 1996 to literally millions a year starting in 1999.

In the current operation, authorities believe the pipeline to Los Angeles was coming from a manufacturer in Amsterdam capable of making 1 million Ecstasy tablets a day. Dutch police were unable to locate it Wednesday, and were ratcheting up their investigation to find it, according to federal law enforcement sources here.

To aid that effort, the FBI and DEA have dispatched agents to Amsterdam to help in the investigation.

“We have culminated the smuggling and distribution end,” said Leonhart. “Now we’re looking into the actual producers of it.”

Authorities said they hoped those already arrested will cooperate in the ongoing investigation.

Agents first learned of the Ecstasy ring in September 1999, when a tip about one of Ibrahim’s alleged associates was passed to the Southwest Border Initiative, a task force of FBI, DEA and Customs agents operating near the Mexico border.

Agents made one purchase of “a thousand or so” tablets, and then another buy, and used that to get a judge to approve phone taps to monitor the operation, the FBI’s Wiley said.

One wiretap led to another as more alleged accomplices were identified and plans were made.

Authorities in England, France, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands were brought in on the investigation as phone traces led back to trafficking associates in their countries, according to interviews and affidavits.

Customs agents tipped off to the cartel seized 700 pounds of Ecstasy tablets in Los Angeles on Dec. 21, 1999, and an additional 300 pounds on May 8, authorities said.

After that, the traffickers tried to fool authorities, Wiley said, by moving around Europe and sending the packages from other cities--often through air freight companies.

Then, in July, federal agents heard about a huge shipment of Ecstasy tablets. On July 21, it landed: 1,096 pounds of the drug, or 2.1 million tablets, came via an Air France plane into Los Angeles International Airport. It was hidden in clothing and office supplies, authorities say.

Agents had tracked the shipment for weeks via wiretaps and seized faxes, including some that Ibrahim sent and received from a Kinko’s copying store in Santa Monica, according to affidavits and interviews.

With a $40-million street value, the haul was by far the largest Ecstasy confiscation in U.S. history.

Three of Ibrahim’s alleged top associates were arrested: Jiha “Steve” Ryu, 35, a South Korean citizen who lives in Granada Hills; Mark Edward Belin, 28, and Damon Todd Kidwell, 29, both of Los Angeles.

Cell phone taps showed that Ibrahim was in the area at the time. But he escaped, and was seen soon afterward in the resort city of Acapulco.

Instead of arresting him, authorities waited. And they watched.

Officials say Ibrahim immediately began planning to send a shipment of 300 to 500 kilos of cocaine from Mexico to Amsterdam, where his alleged associates would sell or trade it and use the money to buy more Ecstasy tablets. Ibrahim flew to Europe as plans were made to ship 1.2 million Ecstasy tablets to Los Angeles, authorities said.

An alleged associate, Joseph Gilboa, flew in from Israel to help “facilitate the shipment,” the DEA says.

The drugs were seized Sept. 6 as they were hauled from an Amsterdam warehouse in gym bags, Leonhart said. Ibrahim, Gilboa and others were arrested; Ibrahim was nabbed as he strolled out of the lobby of a nearby hotel.

According to affidavits and interviews, Operation Red Tide has led to seizures of Ecstasy--and arrests of alleged Ibrahim conspirators--in Boston, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Anchorage and Salt Lake City, as well as in London, Frankfurt, Milan and Amsterdam.

In Southern California, federal agents were assisted by the California Highway Patrol, the county Sheriff’s Department and the Downey Police Department.