ATTORNEY SENTENCED FOR ROLE IN DRUG RING

A Houston attorney has been sentenced to federal prison for his role in a
large-scale drug and money laundering ring.

U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. Thursday ordered Jose Carl
Aaslatten, 31, to spend 96 months in prison for conspiring to launder
money. He was also fined $6,000.

Aaslatten told the Waco judge that he laundered millions of drug dollars
through legitimate businesses from April 1993 to September 1995.

He and five co-defendants distributed millions of "Ectasy" [sic] tablets
manufactured at an 8,000 square foot laboratory in Tijuana, Mexico. The
plant produced 38,000 pills per hour, prosecutors said.

The pills were taken across the border to San Diego, where they were
repackaged and shipped to Houston for distribution.

The lab and several metric tons of precursor chemicals were seized by
Mexican federal police in February 1995, with help from U.S. authorities.

Prosecutors said the three-year investigation by the Drug Enforcement
Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and the Harris County
Sheriff's Department has resulted in the seizure of more than $900,000 from
Aaslatten alone.

Aaslatten and co-defendants Houstonians Brett Barnett and William Adams of
Houston, Randall Calvert of Port Aransas, Justin King of Dallas, and Chris
Roddy of Denton pleaded guilty to money laundering in November.

Smith also imposed the following prison terms on Aaslatten's codefendants:
Barnett, 33 months and a $1,200 fine; Adams, 36 months and a $1,200 fine;
Calvert, 87 months and a $3,000; King, 48 months and a $1,500 fine; and
Roddy, 27 months in prison and a $1,200 fine.

Copyright 1998 Houston Chronicle