Does the public realize that we are actually financing the Taliban in Afghanistan? Where do we think they get the money to buy weapons? It's from us. Our country spends billions of dollars on illegal heroin, and guess where most of the heroin comes from - the poppy fields of Afghanistan. Why do we not just destroy the poppy fields? Because that would destroy the Afghan economy. How about instead of fighting a war there, we just destroy the poppies and give the Afghan farmers the money to grow useful crops. [continues 101 words]
Grandma had a special cookie recipe, according to federal agents. Investigators caught 77-year-old Nancy "Grandma" Booth repeatedly in wiretapped phone calls making crack cocaine sales from her Utica home, according to the FBI. Booth was among 26 people arrested Tuesday on charges of running a massive crack cocaine-trafficking ring in the Rome and Utica areas for the past two years. One defendant is from Syracuse, two are from Canastota in Madison County and the rest from Oneida County. [continues 264 words]
Two dozen members of a Syracuse street gang were accused Tuesday of using systematic violence to protect its drug trade on the South Side over the past eight years. A federal grand jury accused members of the Boot Camp Gang of 42 criminal acts since 1995, including one homicide, as proof that the gang was an organized crime enterprise. It was the first time the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act had been used against a street gang in Syracuse, prosecutors said. [continues 1072 words]
He Admits Receiving $100,000 In Disability Benefits Since 1995 An Onondaga man admitted Wednesday he defrauded the federal government out of $100,000 in disability benefits by failing to reveal he was a self-employed drug dealer. Van Williams, 58, of 4371 Olympus Heights Drive pleaded guilty to conspiring to sell cocaine and defrauding the Social Security Administration by collecting monthly benefits since 1995 for a knee injury. Williams told the government in sworn documents that he was unable to work, when in fact he was selling cocaine to street-level dealers in Syracuse from 1995 until his arrest in December 2000. [continues 158 words]
Man Accused of Being a Drug Dealer Now Also Accused of Hiding Drug Income An accused drug dealer has been charged with defrauding the federal government by collecting welfare benefits without revealing his income from drug sales. Van Williams, 57, of 4371 Olympus Heights Drive, Onondaga, pleaded innocent this week to charges that he defrauded the Social Security Administration by failing to disclose that he was working as a drug dealer since 1995 while he collected monthly benefits. Williams applied for Social Security benefits by saying a knee injury left him unable to work. [continues 306 words]
Unsealed documents say lab operated for three years at Upstate Medical University. For the past three years, John Falitico Jr. sneaked into a laboratory at Upstate Medical University in the middle of the night twice a month and cooked up a batch of the illegal stimulant methamphetamine, according to court papers unsealed this week in federal court. Falitico was selling the drug up to 12 times a month to people who came to a back door at Weiskotten Hall where corpses were delivered for autopsy at the state-run teaching hospital, according to an affidavit from Scott Smith, an Onondaga County sheriff's investigator. [continues 569 words]
Anti-drug Councilor In Rome Charged. Lawyer: He Was In Wrong Place At Wrong Time. A Rome city councilman who has campaigned against drug abuse was charged Thursday with conspiring to sell cocaine. John K. Ciccotti, 40, was accused of scheming with Mark A. Capponi to sell 1.12 ounces to an undercover police informant for $1,800 in July at an undisclosed location in Rome. Ciccotti, a Republican who has been a councilman for 10 years, is up for re-election Nov. 6. His opponent, Democratic Oneida County corrections officer Brett Johnson, said he would not comment on Ciccotti's charges. [continues 281 words]
BELOIT, Wis. -- To a casual observer, the rural dental clinic on the outskirts of this city 100 miles northwest of Chicago suddenly had a group of new patients: a dozen young men and women in scruffy garb. And judging by their frequent trips to the clinic, beginning in mid-September, they all had bad teeth. In reality, they actually were biting down hard on a festering crime problem fueled by a pair of illicit "open air" drug markets. The clinic was a front, part of an undercover sting run by the "patients," a mix of federal agents, local officers and state police from Illinois and Wisconsin. Using the clinic as a headquarters, they posed as drug figures to infiltrate a loose-knit ring of crack cocaine dealers. [continues 313 words]
Joe Vanacora makes no pretense of being a Santa Claus figure. But the steady flow of mail he receives from mayors and police chiefs in Illinois and other parts of the Midwest, all asking for help in the war on drugs, attests to his popularity as a gift-giver. He grants their wishes, when he can. Just ask officials in North Chicago, Kankakee and Aurora and the Midwestern cities of Minneapolis; Milwaukee; Racine, Wis.; and Ft. Wayne, Ind. But like any good thing, there isn't always enough to go around. That's a downside of Vanacora's job as chief of a five-state region for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, where a team of his undercover agents is in hot demand. [continues 680 words]
