DRUG KINGPINS CASHING IN ON SUBURBS' SPOILS

The Comfort And Security Of Affluent Areas Are Selling Points For
Criminals, Officials Say.

They were living the American dream.

A lavish home in the suburbs. Fine clothes and jewelry. Expensive
cars. All financed, if federal investigators are correct, with narco dollars.

While the description was applied most recently to the lifestyle of
Vicente and Chantal Esteves, a young couple arrested on charges of
running an international cocaine distribution network from their home
in Monmouth County, it could apply to a number of convicted or
suspected drug kingpins whose cases have surfaced in the last two years.

They live in comfortable, upper-middle-class communities where BMWs
are commonplace, swimming pools dot many backyards, and the school
system is top-notch.

And they accumulate the kind of luxury items - authorities found
nearly 100 Rolex watches and 100 pairs of Prada shoes in the Esteves
residence - that separate the really wealthy from the merely well-to-do.

"It was an enterprise concealed in suburbia," said DEA Agent Douglas
S. Collier, spokesman for the agency's Newark office that worked the
Esteves case. "They had so much money they didn't know what to do with it."

While several neighbors, who would only speak anonymously, said last
week that they wondered about the Esteveses' ostentatious lifestyle,
narcotics investigators say it fits a pattern.

Drug kingpins, they say, move to the suburbs for the same reasons as
anyone else - for comfort and security. And, like other goal-oriented
entrepreneurs, many flaunt their success.

"It's about the money and living the lavish lifestyle," said FBI
Agent John M. Cosenza, who supervises a drug task force out of
Philadelphia. "We're seeing more and more moves out to the suburbs."

"They move to an affluent community because they want a nice home and
better schools for their children," said Jeremiah A. Daley, executive
director of the Philadelphia-Camden office of the federally funded
High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program.

Another factor, he said, is safety.

Living in the suburbs usually removes a kingpin - and his family -
from the violent world of drug dealing and competitors who often use
guns to settle disputes. "They move away from the field of fire, so
to speak," Daley said.

Vicente Esteves, 35, and his wife, Chantal, 30, were living in a
spacious new house on Taylors Mills Road in Manalapan when they were arrested.

Gerald McAleer, who heads the DEA's New Jersey office, compared the
5,000-square-foot residence - with its dance floor and DJ booth,
weight room, game room and home theater with stadium seating - to
"something out of the movie Scarface."

Alton "Ace Capone" Coles, convicted this year of using his Southwest
Philadelphia hip-hop record company as a front for a $25 million
crack cocaine operation, was arrested shortly after moving into a
$500,000 home he had built outside Mullica Hill in Gloucester County.
In the garage was his $250,000 Bentley.

Ricardo McKendrick Jr., part of an alleged father-son team that has
been described as a major source of cocaine to Philadelphia drug
dealers, lives in an upper-middle-class development in Woodstown,
Salem County. The night of his arrest, police found nearly $1 million
in cash in the trunk of his Mercedes, parked in the driveway.

The home is on Rockwell Lane between Kingsberry and Queensberry
Lanes, around the corner from the posh Town and Country Golf Links
country club, where an annual membership is $1,750.

"It's a long way from 25th and Federal," said Daley, referring to the
South Philadelphia neighborhood where McKendrick's father lives in a
rowhouse and where, that same night, authorities found 274 kilograms
of cocaine. The drugs, in brick form and ready for distribution, had
a street value of about $28 million, police said.

The McKendricks, arrested on April 1, are awaiting trial.

Benjamin Ton, who pleaded guilty last year to heading a $50 million
marijuana and ecstasy distribution network tied to Canadian-based
Vietnamese drug dealers, was living in a spacious home in the
Cobblestone Farms section of Sicklerville, Camden County, when he was
arrested three years ago. Outside were a Corvette, a BMW and a Lexus.

Not bad for a 30-year-old who, two years earlier, lived in Folcroft
and worked as a copy machine repairman.

"There has been a perception in the past that law enforcement wasn't
looking out there," Daley said of suspected drug dealers' rationale
for moving to the suburbs, and even to some exurbs.

But case after case developed by HIDTA investigations, he said, has
led authorities to enclaves in Chester and Delaware Counties, in
South Jersey and in New Castle County in Delaware.

Coles, the Southwest Philadelphia kingpin, lived in a posh townhouse
in Newark, Del., before relocating to South Jersey.

Convicted with five associates in March, he faces a potential life
sentence. A codefendant, girlfriend Asya Richardson, lived with him
in Gloucester County at the time of their arrests. They moved there
10 days before the DEA swooped in.

Richardson, 28, faces a possible 10-year sentence on money-laundering
charges. According to evidence introduced during the trial, she was a
relatively minor player in the drug ring.

On wiretapped conversations that were part of the investigation,
Richardson was repeatedly heard discussing plans for the house that
was being built, the draperies she wanted to install, and the
shrubbery she hoped to plant.

Wiretaps also figure to be a part of the Esteves case, now before a grand jury.

Peter Warshaw, first assistant Monmouth County prosecutor, declined
to comment on the investigation.

At a news conference about the arrests, authorities alleged that
Vicente Esteves was leader of a smuggling operation that imported
more than a ton of cocaine a month from Mexico and Colombia.

They charged that the operation generated about $1 million a week for
the organization, cash that Esteves turned into his version of the good life.

His home, built on a corner lot in an upper-middle-class
neighborhood, is assessed at about $1.7 million. Its market value may
be millions more.

When police raided the residence they seized over a million dollars'
worth of jewelry, including the Rolex watches, stored in one of the
many walk-in closets.

In another closet, authorities found Chantal Esteves' Prada shoes,
many with photos taped to the boxes so, investigators believe, she
could keep track of her footwear.

There were a dozen plasma TVs in the two-story home, a pool and
cabana, and patio furniture that still had $1,000 price tags attached.

The neatly groomed grounds were lined with arborvitae trees that
provided a measure of privacy. The entrance to the property was
barred by an eight-foot-high iron gate and a plaque that warned
"Entire Site Protected by Video Surveillance."

"They were a young couple, and I said to my wife, 'How are they
making it?' " said one of several neighbors who asked to remain anonymous.

"People get greedy and don't know what to do with their money," he
said as he stood in front of his ranch-style home down the block from
the Esteves residence. "But it catches up with you. . . . You don't
put a house like that on the corner so that everybody can look at you."

Across Taylors Mills Road at the Carchesio Farms nursery, a clerk who
also didn't want to give her name said the arrests have been the talk
of the town. The clerk said she always wondered about the couple.

"There was something funky," she said. "They planted trees at the
wrong time of the year, and when they died, they just planted more.
It was like they couldn't care less.

"They put in these expensive pavers all over the property, walkways
that led nowhere. What was that about?"

And, finally, she said, there were the linens.

After the arrest, customers said that Chantal Esteves had a running
tab at a local, high-end linen shop where she spent about $6,000 a
month on items she had delivered.

"How many freakin' sets of towels do you need?" the clerk asked.