HAITIAN DRUG GANG TAKING SOUTH FLORIDA BACK
TO ITS 'MIAMI VICE' DAYS

MIAMI -- Harkening back to the mammoth drug seizures and violence of
the 1980s' Miami Vice era, some wealthy Haitian drug traffickers are
returning South Florida to the forefront of the nation's narcotics
trade, authorities said.

Authorities say that in the last three years they have seized some
13,000 pounds of cocaine, tracked 30 home invasion robberies and
investigated more than 15 unsolved homicides in Miami-Dade County --
all tied to a Haitian drug organization.

Just last week, federal authorities announced the seizure of 3,000
pounds of cocaine hidden inside four freighters from Haiti. It was
welded inside the ships' keel.

The Haitian drug organization's leaders "are powerful and they are
politically connected in a country that is struggling with being one
of the most poverty-stricken in the world," said Hardrick Crawford,
chief of the FBI's narcotics and organized crime division in Miami.

"In just a few years, they have gone from being dormant, small-time
players to very serious players," he said.

Informants' tips led to the latest seizures, but federal agents say
they have mostly been unsuccessful in penetrating the Haitian border
to investigate the group.

Only one of the group's leaders has been indicted -- Founa Jean Louis.
In an affidavit filed last August, FBI agent Charles Daly described
how she was taped in a phone conversation with two Miami
co-conspirators organizing a shipment and its distribution.

But authorities know little more about her and she remains
at-large.

U.S. Customs Special Agent Frank Figueroa, who heads the agency's
Miami operation, believes the group has smuggled tons of cocaine into
the United States undetected.

Three to five freighters arrive in South Florida from Haiti each week
to pick up bicycles, beans, rice and cooking oil, Figueroa said. He
doesn't see how they could make a profit if that's all they have been
shipping.

"This is a smuggling scheme that perhaps has gone on for a long time,"
he said.