Posted on 07/09/2006 9:55:24 AM PDT by Rakkasan1
In the eyes of the federal agents who secretly watched him, Alberto Zatarain was a drug dealer who made all the right moves. He had at least three aliases. He switched cell phones every month and drove ugly old cars to avoid notice. After dark, he holed up and watched TV inside a rented matchbox house in Richfield that rattled from low-flying jets. No clubs, no parties, no women.
And every few months, when another runner came up from Mexico, Zatarain handed off suitcases of cash -- profits from a booming business that stretched from metro suburbs to farm towns in the Red River Valley to Fargo.
He was selling methamphetamine, and demand never let up.
Operating a network of stash houses from Richfield to Brooklyn Park, and often delivering meth hidden inside jars of instant coffee to customers, Zatarain and his band of couriers at times in recent years reeled in $250,000 a month.
"He controlled Minnesota and North Dakota," a federal drug-enforcement agent said.
Zatarain, 23, wasn't an independent operator. He was a point man for a shadowy, cunning cartel in Mexico that federal authorities say now dominates the illicit meth trade besieging Minnesota and the Midwest.
The cartel, rooted in Mexico's Sinaloa region, is producing a highly addictive form of the drug in large clandestine labs south of the border, then shipping stockpiles of it here to dealers such as Zatarain through a cross-country smuggling system.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Just doing the dealing Americans are unwilling to do.
And they want to build a highway to speed things up from Mexico - - -
That Super Highway will bring his 'supplies' faster, better, more convenient. Right through Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas City and north.
How convenient for him.
¡VIVA METHICO!
yep, I call the highway 'the highway to he!!.'
You're right. We should pass a law to abolish/ban all cars and trucks so drug dealers can't use them.
Even when reporting on criminal, drug dealers, MSM rags like the "Red Star" avoid mention of the filthy scum's immigration status.
Even when reporting on criminal, drug dealers, MSM rags like the "Red Star" avoid mention of the filthy scum's immigration status.
Actually this is attributable to the success of the law enforcement in this country. I know someone who retired from "cooking" due to repeated arrests. He was paid handsomely to teach "border brothers" about meth. What was once a one pot lab in the U.S. may now be a manufacturing plant in Mexico.
yeah, I was searching for that ,too.
Even when reporting on criminal, drug dealers, MSM rags like the "Red Star" avoid mention of the filthy scum's immigration status.
Very sporting of them to point out all the mistakes. I'm sure the cartel will revise their operations manuals.
Friend or relative?
Ok, but the meth trade is still a demand driven market.
No demand=no drug trade.
Ask yourself who is on the demand side.
this is going to sound a little funny, but for the past several months or perhaps the past year, i have noticed an uncanny number of people traveling n-s on I-35 with minnesota plates. the majority are white, but a fair number are hispanic. i dont typically see a lot of kansas plates, or nebraska plates, or iowa plates, or plates from the dakotas. but i do see A LOT of plates from minnesota. i have often thought that perhaps it was drug related, as i see no other possible explanation for so many minnesotans to be traveling this way. then i see this story...
What brings them all that way from Mexico? Meat packing? Mining operations? No one seemed to know.
US could stop this tomorrow with a stoke of a pen. Give the doctors back the ability to prescribe "diet" pills, mothers little helpers, amphetamines like they had before the DEA edict of 1973. There wasn't any meth cooking in America then, and the users MOST of the time, had responsible doctors monitoring them.
This meth scourge is just like bathtub gin during the prohibition...
Get your flameproof shorts on quickly!
Don't defy the moral absolutists, the GOP party line and the federal government in one fell swoop using common sense and think there won't be consequences.
Nobody sees the connection that if we throw out all the illegal Mexicans, we won't have illegal Mexicans here running dope! Furthermore, if there were no or low profits in doing it, they wouldn't be selling dope anyhow and would revert to stealing and robbery.
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