WIRETAP LEADS INVESTIGATORS TO ECSTASY SMUGGLER

Drug Mule Part Of String Of Arrests Of Major E Manufacturers

A police phone wiretap in the Netherlands helped the local airport drug
squad nab an ecstasy smuggler.

Daniel K. Berge was first detained by police in June 1999 after a tip
was received. Around the same time, another drug courier was arrested in
Calgary. Berge was found carrying 8,000 tablets of the popular
mind-altering rave party drug strapped to his body.

But he wasn't charged and was in fact released because police didn't
want to jeopardize a European police investigation, federal Crown
Counsel Gerry Sair said.

A member of the Vancouver RCMP drug squad said police in Holland
arrested a couple of major European drug manufacturers in Amsterdam and
shut down a couple of labs which were producing ecstasy 24 hours per
day.

"They were pounding out tablets like Tim Hortons pounds out doughnuts,"
said the drug squad member.

Aside from the two couriers in Vancouver and Calgary, he said there were
one or two other couriers arrested in Eastern Canada on the same phone
wiretap information.

Berge was finally charged several months after he was originally
arrested and then plead guilty last October to the smuggling charge.

Sair said the maximum sentence Berge faced was 10 years, but Richmond
Provincial Court Judge Ron Fratkin took into consideration the fact that
Berge was simply a courier.

Berge is also prohibited from possessing a firearm for 10 years.