Pubdate: Thu, 22 Aug 2002
Source: Boston Herald (MA)
Copyright: 2002 The Boston Herald, Inc
Contact:  http://www.bostonherald.com/news.html
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/53
Author: J.M. Lawrence
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

FUGITIVE IN POT RING CASE RETURNED TO HUB COURT

An international fugitive running for more than a decade from charges he 
brokered massive marijuana shipments to New England was nabbed in Paris and 
brought before a federal judge in Boston yesterday.

U.S. Marshals and Drug Enforcement Administration agents accompanied 
Richard Booker from France after he was stopped at a Paris airport Monday 
while attempting to enter the country to visit his ex-wife and two sons.

"He just ran out of luck," said one investigator. "He thought he was going 
to get away with this."

First indicted in Boston in 1989, the 60-year-old alleged kingpin 
originally fled from Miami in 1989 when the Boston indictment shattered a 
drug ring once described as a cadre of "children of the '60s."

Yesterday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Lawrence P. Cohen ordered Booker held 
without bail and set a detention hearing for Aug. 28.

The indictment accuses Booker, who holds duel citizenship in France and 
England, of ordering freighters full of drugs to St. Bart's in the 
Caribbean. There, the marijuana was loaded into sailboats, according to the 
indictment.

Booker allegedly sent the shipments to Ralph Maling and his three brothers 
in what was called the biggest marijuana ring in New England at the time, 
authorities said. The ring's drug importation dated back to 1972 and 
brought more than 100,000 pounds of weed to the Boston area.

Maling was sentenced in 1990 to 10 years in prison without parole.

Booker had been captured in 1994 in Paris but allegedly sailed away to 
Senegal while awaiting an extradition hearing. This time, the French gave 
U.S. officials 24 hours to come and get Booker, sources said.
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