Pubdate: Fri, 24 Aug 2001
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2001 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Section: New York Region
Author: Alan Feuer

AFTER 9 YEARS, MAN IS CAUGHT IN DRUG CASE

After running from the law for more than nine years, a Westchester County 
man was arrested last week and charged with being one of the biggest 
wholesale marijuana suppliers in the New York area over the last two decades.

Irwin S. Kletter, originally from Bedford, was picked up Aug. 16 at his 
home in Pompano Beach, Fla., federal officials announced yesterday. He was 
arraigned yesterday on charges of running a drug operation that had moved 
in excess of 1,000 kilograms of marijuana since 1990, a crime that carries 
a maximum penalty of life in prison, the officials said. He is being held 
without bail.

Mr. Kletter, 64, was known in the underworld as Sonny. He was one of a 
handful of prominent New York drug dealers whose sophisticated operation 
used sea and air freight containers to ship marijuana into the metropolitan 
area, said Burton Ryan, an assistant United States attorney. Smugglers 
working for Mr. Kletter's ring would sometimes transport drugs across the 
desert from Mexico on the backs of donkeys, and at other times drugs were 
hidden in shipments of vegetables and furniture, Mr. Ryan said.

The Drug Enforcement Administration and the United States Marshals Service 
tracked Mr. Kletter to Florida in recent weeks by analyzing the phone 
records of several of his known associates, Mr. Ryan said. He had been 
living in Florida for only about three months, Mr. Ryan added, when he was 
placed under surveillance and eventually arrested.

In 1992, Mr. Kletter was indicted in Seattle on charges of buying several 
tons of marijuana from a supplier in Thailand, but he went into hiding 
before he was arrested. He was indicted again in 1995 in Denver, where he 
was charged with drug peddling and money laundering.

According to a warrant issued by federal officials in Seattle, Mr. Kletter 
had contacts who "may have criminal associates in France, Canada, 
Switzerland, Thailand, Ireland, Denmark and Germany." A D.E.A. Web site 
that named Mr. Kletter as a wanted fugitive said one of his previous 
addresses was on West 79th Street in Manhattan.
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