U.S. Customs Smashes Ecstasy Smuggling Ring

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. customs officials said on Wednesday they had
smashed an international ring whose members smuggled as many as nine
million tablets of the party drug Ecstasy to the United States from Europe
while posing as tourists and business executives.

Twenty-five people, including a Los Angeles-based Israeli thought to be the
mastermind of the operation, have been arrested after a year-long
investigation spanning seven U.S. cities and the French capital Paris.

"This investigation began at the bottom and ended at the top," said U.S.
Customs Commissioner Raymond Kelly. "Customs investigators were ultimately
able to arrest the accused ringleader and bring down a huge Ecstasy
trafficking syndicate."

Ecstasy is the street name for the illegal drug MDMA and is popular among
teenagers frequenting all-night dance clubs and informal parties known as
raves. It is mainly manufactured in northern Europe.

Customs and drug enforcement agents in the United States and France seized
some 650,000 Ecstasy tablets with a street value of about $19.5 million
during the investigation. It was sparked by the arrest last July of two
women at Los Angeles airport who arrived on a Paris flight with 140,000
Ecstasy pills hidden in boxes of toys.

According to an indictment issued by a federal grand jury in California,
the ring employed 30 to 50 couriers who posed as tourists, families and
business executives to bring the party drug into cities on both the U.S.
east and west coasts.