MARIJUANA KINGPIN CONVICTED, FACES LIFE

More than anything, Jose Luis Aravelo considered himself a hard worker.

He became a millionaire after two decades in business and later owned a
string of companies with names like Burning Diesel and Burrito Bandit.

And he rewarded himself with two homes in the foothills of Tucson, Ariz., a
new Chevrolet Tahoe and seven Harley- Davidson motorcycles.

His downfall began with a bag filled with about $500,000, a scrap of paper
with a scribbled cell phone number and a meeting at a tire dealership in Tampa.

Aravelo, an Arizona native, was one of the largest marijuana distributors
in the United States, prosecutors say. He was convicted in federal court in
Tampa this week of planning to distribute more than 1,000 kilograms of
marijuana and conspiring to launder money. He faces life in prison and an
$8 million fine.

The jury also voted to take away his homes, his SUV and his Harleys and
ordered him to forfeit $17.5 million.

According to testimony during the trial, Aravelo's people grew the
marijuana at a secret plantation in Mexico, then shipped mountains of it
into the United States through an intricate network of underground tunnels
beginning in seedy border towns.

Eventually the marijuana arrived in stash houses run by family members in
Tucson, prosecutors said. There relatives would weigh, package and
color-code the pot before it was shipped cross-country in tractor-trailers
and recreational vehicles.

``He ran his business like a Fortune 500 company,'' said Don Dunn, a U.S.
Customs agent assigned to the case - even buying special seeds from
Vancouver, British Columbia, to improve his crop.

The marijuana was premium, worth about $500 a pound, agents say.

Some of the money was eventually laundered through pricey art deals in
Europe, said spokeswoman Pam McCullough of the Customs Service.

To instill discipline, agents said, Aravelo went after late-paying dealers
with a 120,000-volt cattle prod.

And he kept two law firms busy, one to handle business affairs and the
other to keep associates out of jail.

Aravelo's empire began to crumble with the 1998 arrest of a bag man in
Texas carrying $576,000 in cash, the cell phone number and a little cocaine.

``Let's say he had limited mental powers,'' Dunn said. ``He had to write
everything down. He had the telephone number, addresses and even a note to
take the money back to Arizona.''

Apparently, the man had flown to Tampa International Airport, rented a car,
picked up the cash - proceeds from a sale - and started to drive back.

Eventually a Customs agent called the cell phone number. A woman in Tampa
answered, mistook the agent for a trucker named ``Butch,'' and said she had
his money ready - $50,000. The agents set up a meeting with her at a
Firestone store on West Shore Boulevard.

From there the agents eventually uncovered an operation stretching across
13 states.

``We followed the money and the money brought us full circle,'' said Roger
Urbanski, Customs special agent in charge.

The money was everywhere. Once agents found $1.3 million in a 38-foot
American Eagle motor home. Another time one of Aravelo's lawyers sent a
clerk to pick up $1 million in cash.

Aravelo, 42, started his career in Douglas, Ariz., smuggling in marijuana
from Mexico in backpacks, Dunn said, then graduated to airplanes and next
started the plantation.

In the last year, agents say they've seized $7.2 million in cash, 73 pieces
of real estate, and 44 vehicles of various kinds, including a Cessna 310
airplane.