MARIJUANA HAUL IN WILL COUNTY SETS U.S. RECORD

14,000 Pounds Hidden Behind Hot Peppers

The truck was supposed to be carrying seven tons of jalapeno peppers, but
Rocco, the drug-sniffing dog, knew immediately that the produce was not
intended for salsa.

Instead, police said they found 14,000 pounds of marijuana hidden behind
two pallets of outdated hot peppers in a semitrailer parked next to a
Bolingbrook truck stop. The site has become a well-used transfer station
for Chicago-bound drug shipments from the U.S.-Mexico border.

No arrests have been made and the truck's driver has not been found, police
said Monday. They believe the truck may have been parked at the Pace bus
service lot on Thursday. The trailer and tractor belong to a Dallas-area
trucking firm, and both are registered in Texas. The truck's records
identify it as carrying about 14,000 pounds of peppers.

The truck's cargo was the largest single seizure of marijuana inside the
U.S. border in history, said Dan Kent, deputy director of the Illinois
State Police. A 12,000-pound seizure in Florida in 1995 was the second
largest, he said, and the state police's Narcotics and Currency
Interdiction Team seized about 18,000 pounds of marijuana over all of last
year.

The 175 boxes of marijuana, which authorities had to cart to the Illinois
State Police headquarters warehouse in Springfield because there was too
much to store locally, was valued at $20 million, Kent said.

"That's $20 million in dope that won't go onto our streets and affect our
communities," he said.

The truck was parked in a Pace bus lot next to a truck stop at Interstate
Highway 55 and Illinois Highway 53 in Bolingbrook, said Lt. Carl Dobrich,
commanding officer of the Narcotics and Currency Interdiction Team.

Drug enforcement agencies have been paying increasing attention to the
truck stop over the last couple of years after seizing other
multimillion-dollar drug shipments there, Dobrich said. A shipment seized
in January 2000 was disguised as a load of cabbage, and one a month earlier
was disguised as garlic.

Investigators found the trailer Friday as they were making a regular patrol
of the area, Dobrich said. Several irregularities drew investigators'
attention: First, the truck was parked in a Pace lot, where it did not
belong, he said, and second, the truck was unattended but the trailer's
refrigeration unit was left running. The Texas registration also fit the
profile of a drug shipment, he said.

The Romeoville Police Department's drug-sniffing dog Rocco was brought in
and gave indications he smelled drugs, police said.

Police received permission from the Will County state's attorney's office
to cut the trailer's large commercial lock on the back door, Dobrich said.
The Bolingbrook Fire Department needed special equipment to cut it.

Inside the trailer, police found two pallets loaded with white boxes of
jalapenos at the end of the truck. But behind the peppers they found the
rest of the 48-foot-long trailer loaded with marijuana, compressed and
shrink-wrapped in bricks of varying sizes and packed in cardboard boxes.

The truck's cargo was the second drug shipment investigators have
intercepted in the area near I-55 and Illinois 53 this year, Dobrich said.
In 2000, they seized eight to 10 drug shipments in the area, which is
crowded with trucking terminals and light industrial development. Truck
stops there have become popular transfer points for narcotics traffic from
the southern border states, he said.

Drivers bring the semis as far as Bolingbrook and then leave them there and
return south. Another driver picks up the truck and takes it into Chicago,
where the drugs are distributed. Some of the drugs stay in Chicago, and
some are shipped to other cities, including on the East Coast.