Texas traffickers hide in plain sight in Colorado with its lax pot laws Tien Nguyen, 35, is charged in Smith County, Texas with money laundering after allegedly being stopped with $71,900 in cash in a rental car on Interstate 20. Handout Tien Nguyen, 35, is charged in Smith County, Texas with money... Three packages were mailed one after another, each shipped from the same Colorado post office to the same Houston business in the name of the same fictitious person. [continues 1675 words]
A federal appeals court has agreed to hear oral arguments in the case of a Texan suing the Drug Enforcement Administration for using his 18-wheeler without permission for a drug cartel sting that ended in Houston with an informant fatally shot while driving the truck. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans, is scheduled to take the case in February. Lawyers for Craig Patty are hoping the court will reverse a decision by U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal that Patty should get nothing from the DEA for secretly using his truck, which was shot with bullets, including those that killed Lawrence Chapa, who was behind the wheel. [continues 526 words]
The call to legalize pot steadily emanates from the decaying 74-year-old home in Montrose. A gray-haired, sharp-voiced Dean Becker settles in behind a microphone there each Sunday night at the studios of KPFT public radio to spread his mantra: End the Drug War. Becker and those of a like mind about legalizing marijuana say they are getting some traction nowadays. With recreational use of pot now legal in Colorado and Washington - and public opinion polls showing growing nationwide support for such measures - speculation is rampant that even in law-and-order Texas, it is not a question of if, but when, legalization will happen. [continues 791 words]
Javier Pena, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Houston Division, retired Saturday after a 30-year career. The Texas native recently spoke with Houston Chronicle reporter Dane Schiller. Here are edited excerpts from that conversation: Q: What do you make of legalizing pot in Colorado? A: We see the effects it has on people. I'm against legalization. Some states aren't, and that is a political fight. Will Texas ever? I hope not. Q: Does it make you angry? [continues 625 words]
More than 1 million packets of a dangerous, unpredictable new breed of drug were seized in the Houston area by the DEA in the past two years, yet criminal charges are rare for those who make, sell or use them. The packets, sold as potpourri or incense, are among the more popular brands of so-called synthetic marijuana taking center stage in a new front in the war on drugs. On a recent afternoon, glossy packets of strawberry-flavored "Kush" lay side by side in a lighted glass display case, just past the bongs and pipes, at a Houston-area shop. The mixture inside looks like dried, finely crushed green leaves. It is smoked like pot but packs a far different punch - and is fueling the never-ending search for ways to get high. [continues 1549 words]
The U.S. government and a ranking Drug Enforcement Administration official are being sued for up to $6.4 million over a bungled sting targeting a Mexican drug cartel that led to the death of a truck driver doubling as an informant. The dead driver's former boss contends the DEA used his 18-wheel rig in the 2011 operation in Harris County without permission; refused to repair the bullet-riddled truck afterward; and subjected him and his family to unwarranted retaliation by the Zetas cartel, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Houston. [continues 720 words]
Turned Down by FBI Over Misdemeanor 1971 Pot Case A retired Army veteran who fired tanks, cannons and machine guns while protecting this nation recently asked theU.S. government for the green light to buy a .22-caliber rifle from a Walmart in Tomball. Permission denied. The FBI turned down Ron Kelly's application for gun ownership because of a 1971 conviction for minor drug possession. He was busted with a small bag of marijuana while in high school in North Carolina. As a first-time offender, he was sentenced to a year of probation. [continues 748 words]
Houstonian, Who Has No Secrets to Trade, Is Doing More Time Than Drug Lords FORT WORTH - The U.S. government didn't offer a reward for the capture of Houston grandmother Elisa Castillo, nor did it accuse her of touching drugs, ordering killings, or getting rich off crime. But three years after a jury convicted her in a conspiracy to smuggle at least a ton of cocaine on tour buses from Mexico to Houston, the 56-year-old first-time offender is locked up for life - without parole. [continues 729 words]
Without leaving American skies, remotely piloted surveillance drones, outfitted with cameras that provide real-time video, fly along the Texas border searching U.S. territory for drug smugglers, undocumented immigrants and potential terrorists. They also are fully capable of peering into Mexico, where narco terrorists eviscerate the rule of law. But does the U.S. government ever risk the international fallout of using the aircraft's high-tech surveillance abilities to take a peek south of the border "" or share what they see with Mexican counterparts fighting for their lives? [continues 664 words]
Their names change, but all meet the same end: dead, in jail or on the run One by one, Mexico's notorious warlords have come and gone - household names and nightmares with a modern-day twist. Instead of Al Capone or John Gotti, they are drug cartel kingpins with private armies and nicknames like Shorty, Blondie, Friend Killer and most recently, Texas-born La Barbie. Part terrorist. Part rock star. Part legend. But eventually they all meet the same fate, ending up dead, in prison or on the run for life. [continues 1272 words]
Son Calls [name1 redacted] A Family Man, But Agents Link 'Z' To Meth From Mexico [name1 redacted] owns convenience stores and a home in suburban Sugar Land, and he has two kids in college - one a medical student. If federal agents have it right, the 54-year-old who emigrated from Pakistan more than 20 years ago also lived a double life. Far from his family residence on a tree-lined street was a string of younger lovers, a drug habit and a Houston condo, from which he allegedly dispensed wildly addictive methamphetamine over games of pool. [continues 879 words]
Interviews, Files and Court Records Trace a Syndicate's Growth From Small-Time Pot Smuggling to a Mega-Empire With a Hub in Houston Ronald Reagan was in the White House. Eye of the Tiger was on the radio. Cocaine cowboys roamed Miami. And the seeds for what would become perhaps the largest and most powerful crime syndicate in the hemisphere were quietly being sowed in Houston. It was 1982, and William Hoffman, an American drug runner later tucked into the witness-protection program, was busy using rental cars to ferry 25-pound loads of Mexican marijuana from Brownsville to Houston. [continues 2040 words]
For years, Mexico's drug cartels killed with reckless abandon using high-powered guns purchased in Texas, but only now, with thousands dead and the threat of violence spilling onto American soil, is the U.S. enlisting a comprehensive strategy to stop weapons traffickers, contends a new federal report. About 87 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico over the past five years that were traced back to their original owners were purchased in the United States, it finds. "The availability of firearms illegally flowing from the United States into Mexico has armed and emboldened a dangerous criminal element in Mexico, and it has made the brutal work of the drug cartels even more deadly," said U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, which commissioned the report. [continues 473 words]
When South Houston police pulled over a gold Chevy Malibu for speeding on a summer afternoon in 2005, it marked the beginning of the end for at least 68 drug traffickers who over the next four years would be chased and charged with handling thousands of pounds of cocaine and millions of dollars for Mexican drug cartels. From that single traffic stop emerged a portrait of drug dealing and money laundering, murder and kidnapping, in which Houston was its central character -- the trampoline from which rampant chaos and criminality sprang, records show. It also helped unravel the secret lives of cartel workers who blended in as they went about the business of pumping drugs into the United States, and profits back into Mexico. [continues 736 words]
A highly trusted former deputy attorney general, who later became Mexico's drug czar and was embraced by Washington until his death, is accused in a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration report of taking bribes from one of Mexico's oldest narcotics trafficking cartels. Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, killed in November in a mysterious plane crash over Mexico City, is among three senior federal law-enforcement officials named in an April 21-page DEA briefing on organized crime and drug trafficking south of the border. [continues 631 words]
Recent Arrests In A Mistaken Killing Point To The Perilous Presence Of Gangs The order was clear: Kill the guy in the Astros jersey. But in a case of mistaken identity, Jose Perez ended up dead. The intended target -- the Houston-based head of a Mexican drug cartel cell pumping millions of dollars of cocaine into the city -- walked away. Perez, 27, was just a working guy, out getting dinner late on a Friday with his wife and young children at Chilos, a seafood restaurant on the Gulf Freeway. [continues 1245 words]
Recruiter Emphasizes the Value of Brains Over Brawn A federal drug agent gets a badge, and is trained to shoot, kick in doors and slap on handcuffs. Often though, it is the smarter agent, not the stronger one, who catches the bad guy. "It is brains, not just brawn," said Violet Szeleczky, a senior Drug Enforcement Administration agent based in Houston. "You have to be able to put two and two together," she said of the twists an investigation takes. Szeleczky, who oversees the recruiting squad in this region, is hoping to get that message across in order to boost the number of women who might otherwise shy away from a career with the DEA, which is 91 percent male. [continues 593 words]
Millions Could Go to Help Mexico Fight Drug Groups Making $24 Billion a Year Lobbying for nearly $550 million in aid for Mexico and Central America, a senior U.S. official warned Congress on Thursday that billions of dollars in drug cartel profits have made the gangs powerful enough to challenge their governments. Support must be given to President Felipe Calderon's administration as it battles a criminal underworld that smuggles 90 percent of the cocaine consumed in the United States, Anthony Placido, the intelligence chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration, told a congressional subcommittee considering the aid package. [continues 563 words]
The Popular Drug's Prices Have Changed Little in 25 Years A car, a home, a gallon of milk -- most everything costs more now than a generation ago. Except a baggie of Mexican marijuana. Give or take a few dollars, authorities say, pot grown in Mexico and sold in Houston and other Texas cities still goes for about the same price as 25 years ago: $60 to $80 for an ounce. In economic terms, marijuana is far cheaper since the decade when a three-bedroom home in upscale West University cost $150,000, a new ride was less than $6,000 and first lady Nancy Reagan urged kids to "Just Say No." [continues 1002 words]
Drug-gang violence that plagues Mexico is worsening and could spill over into the United States, according to a new report by a consultant on Gov. Rick Perry's Texas Border Security Council. While Mexican President Felipe Calderon has deployed as many as 20,000 troops and federal police to battle the country's powerful drug cartels, gangsters are fighting among themselves for dominance as the flow of drugs continues into America. The 17-page document to be released Wednesday said that more than 2,100 people were killed in drug-related violence since Jan. 1, making 2007 the deadliest year yet. [continues 751 words]
