LAUNDERED AND HUNG OUT TO DRY

Fed Use Bogus Stock Firm To Nab Traffickers

It's hard to think of anyone who could resist the call of today's
roaring bull market.

So when agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration set out to crack
a Colombian cocaine ring three years ago, they opened a fully licensed
- - but also fully bogus - brokerage in suburban Atlanta to get inside
the drug world.

Even though the customers never made a single stock trade -
double-digit stock gains are paltry in contrast to 400% returns on
cocaine - the sting paid off last week with federal indictments of
five Colombians, who are believed to have ties to the Cali drug
cartel, on drug trafficking and money - laundering charges.

The indictments capped an international operation in which authorities
have so far arrested more than 40 people in the U.S. and abroad and
seized some 3,500 kg of cocaine and $10 million of laundered drug money.

The investigation began after authorities in Cartagena, Colombia,
seized 386 kg of cocaine hidden inside containers of frozen fish
shipped by a company with a distribution center in Atlanta. Drug
agents subsequently opened their phony office and offered to launder
funds for suspected traffickers. As it played out, agents picked up
drug funds in gym bags, luggage and boxes on the streets of such
cities as New York, Dallas, Madrid and Rome. Then, with the help of
black-market money changers in Colombia, the dollars were converted
into pesos and deposited into the traffickers' Colombian accounts. But
much to the dismay of the brokerage firm's clients, their gains turned
out to be purely short term.