RING THAT PROVIDED CHEAP, POWERFUL HEROIN RAIDED

Police Blame Surge Of Overdoses On L.A.-Based Mexican Operation;
200 Suspects Arrested

LOS ANGELES -- A Mexican drug trafficking ring that flooded the United
States with cheap and highly pure heroin, causing an upsurge in
overdoses, was dealt a blow Thursday with the arrest of nearly 200
suspects, federal authorities said.

The ring, centered in Los Angeles for the past five years, sold 60
percent to 80 percent pure heroin to drug users in at least 22 cities
across the country, according to law enforcement officials.

Until recently, the purity of Mexican ``black tar'' heroin had been 30
to 40 percent.

The mass arrests culminated a yearlong investigation by the Drug
Enforcement Administration and the FBI, sparked by a rash of deaths
from the high-powered heroin in Chimayo, N.M.

``Not only did this group exhibit disregard for the law, but their
peddling of this powerful and addictive drug showed an even greater
disregard for human life,'' Attorney General Janet Reno said in Washington.

In Los Angeles, U.S. Attorney Alejandro N. Mayorkas branded the ring's
sales practices especially despicable.

``In what can only be termed as depraved,'' he said, a member of the
ring peddled the heroin to addicts being treated at a methadone clinic
in Columbus, Ohio. The drug dealer infiltrated the clinic with the
help of an employee, according to a DEA affidavit.

The alleged U.S.-based ringleader, Oscar Hernandez, 35, and his wife,
Marina Lopez, 39, both Mexican citizens, were arrested before dawn at
their Panorama City home.

DEA officials estimated the ring's sales at more than $25 million a
year.

Authorities said Hernandez's close-knit organization smuggled the
heroin from the Mexican state of Nayarit, a center of poppy growing,
to Los Angeles, where it was packaged and shipped to distributors
throughout the country.

Michele Leonhart, head of the DEA field office in Los Angeles, said
Hernandez was able to avoid detection for so long because his
distributors were relatives or loyal family friends.

In addition to Los Angeles, she said, Hernandez's ring operated in San
Diego; Bakersfield; Portland, Ore.; Honolulu and Maui; Anchorage,
Alaska; Las Vegas and Reno, Nev.; Phoenix and Yuma, Ariz.;
Albuquerque, N.M.; Salt Lake City; Denver; Cleveland, Columbus and
Steubenville, Ohio; Nashville, Tenn; Atlanta; Chicago; Detroit;
Pittsburgh; Corpus Christi, Texas; as well as West Virginia,
Minnesota, New Jersey and Kentucky.

The ring often used teenage girls traveling alone by bus and plane to
deliver the drugs to the distributors, authorities said. Sometimes,
the heroin was concealed in boomboxes that the juveniles carried with
them.

Other times, officials said, the drugs were stuffed inside lamps and
coffee makers and sent through Federal Express and United Parcel Service.

Lopez was believed responsible for recruiting the couriers and
arranging for their transportation.

Hernandez allegedly maintained a storage facility near his home in
Panorama City where the drugs were packaged.

Donnie Marshall, DEA administrator, said, ``This operation, I think,
shows that heroin has re-emerged in our society with a vengeance, and
it is more potent and more deadly in our country than ever before.''

Leonhart, a former undercover agent, said heroin is fast replacing
cocaine as the drug of choice among many young people.

DEA officials said Hernandez's ring sold the potent heroin for $1,500
an ounce, compared with the average of $2,400 that Colombian
traffickers are charging.

``The Mexicans were underselling the Colombians by $800 to $1,000 an
ounce,'' said one official. ``The purity rise by the Mexicans over the
last few years is their way of competing with the high-purity heroin
the Colombians bring in. But the Mexicans also have brought the price
down to compete with Colombians in areas east of the Mississippi River
that they were not in before.''