FEDS SAY STING NETTED 25 MILLION DOSES

Internet Date-rape Drug Sting Nets 115 Arrests In U.S. And Canada

Four people charged in Mobile as part of an Internet sting sold drugs that
led to the death of a Tennessee man, according to a federal indictment
unsealed Thursday.

Authorities arrested 115 people in 84 cities in the United States and
Canada on Wednesday and Thursday in what officials called the first
significant bust of online dealers of a trio of date-rape drugs.

The sting was composed of four regional investigations that were
coordinated and kept quiet until agents could execute dozens of search and
arrest warrants simultaneously. Asa Hutchinson, director of the Drug
Enforcement Administration, said more arrests were likely.

Dubbed Operation Webslinger, the overall investigation targeted three
chemicals that became federally controlled substances in March 2000. They are:

Gamma hydroxybutyrate, called GHB. Known by the street terms "scoop" or
"liquid X," GHB typically comes in the form of an odorless, colorless
liquid. It is taken as a weightlifting supplement, a club drug --
independently, but also to intensify the effects of other drugs -- and has
been used to incapacitate victims of date rape.

Gamma butyrolactone, or GBL, an industrial solvent that the body converts
into GHB once swallowed.

1, 4 Butanediol, or BD, a chemical cousin of GHB and GBL.

All told, authorities said, they seized 3,300 gallons of the drugs, the
equivalent of about 25 million doses.

Like most of those charged, the four people indicted in Mobile are accused
of distributing BD via a Web site, ostensibly as a cleaning product but
knowing it was being ingested.

"These criminals are leaders and mid-level brokers in Internet
drug-trafficking rings," Hutchinson said.

In the Mobile case, agents arrested brothers Kevin and Ronald Brown on
Wednesday in Sparta, Tenn., about halfway between Nashville and Knoxville,
and were searching for two women as of late Thurs day. The women
tentatively are identified in the Mobile indictment by the aliases Julia
Duncan and Paula Stone. Large portions of the case remained sealed.

The four are accused of selling BD that killed a man named Daniel K. Roberts.

David York, the U.S. attorney in Mobile, said Roberts died in Tennessee,
though he was not sure about any other circumstances.

If convicted of selling the drugs that killed Roberts, the defendants could
face up to life prison.

In addition to arresting the Browns, agents also seized large quantities of
property belonging to them, including assorted vehicles, real estate,
computers, jewelry and $800,000 cash. The indictment seeks forfeiture of
other financial assets, including stocks and bank accounts.

The Tennessee-to-Mobile operation -- which local officials called Operation
BlueRaine, after a commercial brand of GHB -- stemmed from a tip to the
Mobile Police Department about two years ago. Officers conducted eight
undercover buys from a Web site operated by the suspects, said Mark
Bullock, deputy assistant director for the Criminal Investigation Division
at FBI Headquarters.

"When we first started this case, we didn't even know what we were buying,"
said John Nixon, the Mobile police narcotics detective who initiated the
investigation. "All we knew was we had kids falling out all over Dauphin
Street."

Local emergency rooms were reporting four or five GHB overdose cases per
weekend, Nixon said.

"Around that time we were really inundated with complaints and overdoses,"
said Mobile Police Chief Sam Cochran.

"Our paramedics were running crazy," Nixon recalled.

Local police teamed up with Mobile-based federal agents to zero in on the
new phenomenon before it spread. Soon, GHB patients all but stopped showing
up at area hospitals, Nixon said, and Mobile staved off the worst of the
nationwide trend.

"When we hit it, we hit it pretty hard. We took pretty much all of it off
the streets," he said. "Whereas other cities were experiencing epidemics of
this stuff, you really couldn't find it in Mobile."

Other main cities involved in the Webslinger sweep were St. Louis, Detroit,
San Diego and the Buffalo, N.Y.-Quebec City, Canada area. In addition to
the DEA, FBI and various local agencies, the U.S. Postal Inspection
Service, U.S. Customs Service, Internal Revenue Service, Royal Canadian
Mounted Police and Ontario police took part in the probes, searches and
arrests.

(Washington Bureau Reporter Sean Reilly contrib uted to this report.)