$1 MILLION, POT SEIZED; 4 CHARGED

This summer, Alexander Kopeykin was the classic American success
story: a Ukrainian immigrant turned Center City jewelry retailer who,
at age 34, was publicly announcing his dream of turning a closed
Delaware riverfront restaurant into a glitzy eatery called Millennium.
Yesterday, however, Kopeykin was a fugitive from the FBI, on the lam
after a purported associate and two Arizona men were arrested
Wednesday with a truckload of high-quality Mexican marijuana and $1
million in cash.

"Now we know where he got the money," speculated Lawrence P. McElynn,
the head of the Philadelphia office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, as he looked at loaves of pressed marijuana loaded on
the tailgate of a rental truck parked outside the federal building in
Center City. Down the street was Kopeykin's store, East Coast Jewelry
& Sound, at 722-24 Market St.

Eight floors above on a conference table in the FBI's headquarters sat
the cash: stacks of $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes, four to six inches
deep, covering about 24 square feet of tabletop.

The haul appeared to amaze even Robert S. Conforti, the head of the
FBI's Philadelphia office.

"One million worth of money and 1,600 pounds of marijuana," Conforti
said. "Usually it takes us two to three years to get to this point. We
were able to put this case together in just two days."

Authorities said the marijuana had a retail value of $2.4
million.

Kopeykin, who has been in the country since at least the mid-'80s and
lives in the 1900 block of Merlin Road in Bustleton, was charged with
conspiracy, possession and distribution of marijuana.

Authorities also charged the three others, who were in federal
custody, pending bail hearings Monday, with the same counts. Two
Nogales, Ariz., men -- Fernando Salcido Morales, 33, and Jacob
Salazar, 24 -- were arrested when the FBI stopped their
tractor-trailer on Front Street early Wednesday after they drove out
of the parking lot of the Holiday Inn in South Philadelphia. The two
brought the marijuana to Philadelphia from the Arizona border city and
were preparing to transport the $1 million back to the supplier,
authorities said.

Another Philadelphia man, Alexander Cherkas, 23, of the 4900 block of
Fitler Street in the Northeast, was arrested shortly after 1 p.m.
Wednesday when agents surprised him and Kopeykin removing boxes of
marijuana from a rental truck and taking them into a house on O Street
near Luzerne in Juniata Park, authorities said.

Both men fled, but Cherkas was arrested after he crashed the rental
truck into a parked police car and was stopped.

According to an FBI affidavit filed in U.S. District Court, Kopeykin
had come under suspicion and agents had been tailing him. On Tuesday
afternoon, Kopeykin drove his new white Dodge Durango to a warehouse
in the 8700 block of Torresdale Avenue in Upper Holmesburg and met the
tractor-trailer from Arizona.

Later that day, the affidavit says, agents followed the
tractor-trailer to the Holiday Inn and, the next morning, after a
drug-sniffing dog confirmed that the truck contained drugs, arrested
Salazar and Morales and confiscated the $1 million, which had been
placed in a secret compartment built into the trailer.

The next day, agents began watching a warehouse in the 500 block of
Washington Avenue in Queen Village. About 12:30 p.m., Kopeykin and
Cherkas left the warehouse, drove the rental truck to the house on O
Street in Juniata Park, and began unloading the vehicle, the affidavit
says. That is when the agents closed in.

U.S. Attorney Michael R. Stiles said that the investigation was
conducted by the FBI's Russian Organized Crime Unit with the DEA, the
U.S. Customs Service, and city and state police. Stiles, however,
stopped short of labeling either Kopeykin or Cherkas a member of any
Russian organized-crime group.

"We're still trying to find out whether this was just four people or
whether this was part of a bigger conspiracy," said the FBI's Conforti.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry