Just wants a
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 ...
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You nailed it!
Neither. Cooking meth for years without protection damaged his heart and he died several years ago. His widow is a recovering addict and she told me the story.
LOL
You need a capital punishment for guys like that if you ever hope to stop this plague.
My only surprise is that the Star & Sicle make the Mexxies look bad.
40 or 50 kilos a year wouldn't touch the total market for the drug in Minnesota or any state.
Probably half the blue collar workers in the construction industry in our country use a little crank to get their day 'kick started' and maybe another hit at noon to carry them through the day.
"Jobs Americans Won't Do."
Otherwise known as jobs Americans held before they were replaced.
This one sounds legitimate, lol, no more tricks!
We've had our cell phone 'cloned' twice in Mexico.
like the "X" - nice touch.
Looks like some of the people that have started showing up here on Holiday Weekends driving $250 - $500,000 boats.
Hi AZ Carolyn...
Law enforcement estimates that there are about 15/20 thousand MS-13 gangsters in the U.S.! By any standards, a spread out, but small army. Of course, one size fits all, and the FROBL must be supporting MS-13 too! Meaning, what see (ughhh) and choose, is what you get!
potlatch: what is cell phone "cloning"? (I've had some strange cell phone "missed calls" recently is why I ask). thanks.
That's the problem - "and demand never let up".
Not Mexicans, not sudafed, not the laws - demand.
Hi, haven't talked to you in awhile!
Twice when we went to Progresso we used our cell phone. After we were home again we got calls from our 'server' asking about all the long distance calls being made from Mexico!!
They use technology and manage to get the information from your cell phone and can make calls from their cell phones using our number!
No, the missed calls arent attributed to something like that.
We no longer turn our cell phone on when down at the border.
Thanks for the info. You're braver than me, actually traversing the border. Keep your powder dry!
Huh, and we're told they're looking for citizenship, and "willingly doing the work Americans won't do."
Mr. President, you're feeding us a Texas-sized serving of bullcrap.
Whereas the local rubes were once content with a meth content of 30-35%, the Mexicans have upped the ante to a product that is often close to 100% pure, crystalline chemical.
Thanks to Mexican Marketing savvy and advanced ideas about racial equality, small-town NASCAR America now has its very own answer to the ghetto dwellers' crack. Guess what, results are the same.
So let's give our industrious neighbors to the South credit where credit is due. They are making Meth that Americans apparently cannot. Customers get higher faster, stay higher longer, ruin their lives, and devastate local economies so efficiently, that more Mexicans than ever are required to do the work they are too wasted to do.
I thought if we surrendered our freedom to buy allergy medicine, meth would instantly disappear. Boy, I'm really surprised to find out that didn't work.
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