WOMAN AT CENTER OF ASIAN DRUG-TRAFFICKING RING GETS NEARLY SIX-YEAR TERM

A woman at the center of an Asian drug-trafficking ring that smuggled
millions of ecstasy pills to Philadelphia and other U.S. cities was
sentenced Tuesday to nearly six years in prison.

Phuong Thi Tran, 39, could have faced more than 17 years under federal
sentencing guidelines, but prosecutors filed a motion for "downward
departure."

That motion typically signals that a defendant has cooperated with
prosecutors. In Tran's case, the attorneys discussed the details of
the motion with the judge privately.

"She did everything she possibly could to assist herself," said
prosecutor Robert Livermore, with the U.S. Department of Justice
Organized Crime and Racketeering Section. "I think she has earned for
herself a substantial reduction."

U.S. District Judge Petrese Tucker agreed, sentencing Tran to 70
months in prison.

Tran, who was born in Vietnam and immigrated to Canada, was part of an
Asian organized crime syndicate that manufactured ecstasy and other
drugs in Canada and smuggled them into the United States.

Prosecutors said the gangs brought as many as 100,000 pills across the
border each week. Tran was involved from 2002 until her arrest in
April 2008, prosecutors said.

She was initially indicted in federal court in Detroit in October
2006, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents seized
several drug shipments there.

A separate ICE investigation learned of a shipment of pills coming to
customers in Philadelphia and Boston in September 2007.

ICE agents and Philadelphia police stopped two of Tran's couriers,
carrying 100,000 pills.

Tran was arrested in Alaska while traveling from Vietnam. She was
transferred to Detroit and then Philadelphia, where the cases against
her were consolidated.

She pleaded guilty in February to two drug conspiracy
counts.

Tran had no supporters in the courtroom Tuesday, but she told the
judge through a translator that she hoped to be reunited with her family.

"If I'm returned to my family I will change my life around," she
said.

Tran, a Canadian citizen, asked to serve her sentence there.