NOT YOUR AVERAGE DRUG BUST

Suspect Wanted in Mexico Found in Wheaton Restaurant

The way U.S. and Mexican authorities describe 44-year-old Zhenli Ye
Gon, he might have sprung from some pulp novelist's overheated
imagination.

Born in Shanghai, he lived in Mexico and ran a pharmaceuticals company
- -- a front, authorities allege, that supplied Mexican drug cartels
with massive quantities of a chemical used to make the street drug
methamphetamine. Police raided his luxurious Mexico City home in
March, carting off what they said was $207 million, most of it in $100
bills that had been stashed behind false walls and in closets. The
U.S. government called it "the largest single drug cash seizure the
world has ever seen."

When the law caught up with Ye Gon on Monday night, his weeks on the
lam ended in an Asian restaurant on Veirs Mill Road in Wheaton -- in
P.J. Rice Bistro, in Westfield Wheaton mall, near a Ruby Tuesday and a
JCPenney.

This is a man who owned a fleet of luxury cars and had mistresses in
several countries, according to Mexican officials. In recent years,
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said, he gambled away nearly
$126 million in Las Vegas casinos.

At P.J. Rice Bistro, where he and a female acquaintance ordered
codfish and baby carrots, DEA agents showed up before dinner was
served. "The police came to the table and asked him to go pretty
fast," a bistro employee recalled yesterday. "They didn't stay in the
restaurant too long."

Not your garden-variety Montgomery County drug bust.

In an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington in support
of a drug charge against Ye Gon, federal authorities allege that,
between December 2005 and August, his company, Unimed Pharm Chem de
Mexico, illegally imported from overseas about 86 metric tons of
restricted chemicals into Mexico "for the express purpose of
manufacturing pseudoephedrine/ephedrine."

The manufacture and possession of pseudoephedrine, a cold medicine
ingredient, is tightly controlled in Mexico, the United States and
elsewhere because it can be used to make methamphetamine.

In all, the affidavit says, the company allegedly imported enough
chemicals to produce 36,568 kilograms of methamphetamine -- with a
street value, the affidavit says, of $724 million.

Ye Gon, whose case has gained huge media attention in Mexico, contends
that the millions in his home were not his alone and that he was
framed by corrupt Mexican politicians. He appeared in U.S. District
Court in Washington yesterday, disheveled and dressed in sneakers,
khakis and a yellow plaid shirt. He was ordered jailed without bond
pending a hearing next month.

Outside the courthouse, his attorney, Martin McMahon, said Ye Gon has
been made a fall guy by leaders of Mexico's ruling National Action
Party. Repeating an allegation that Ye Gon has made in recent weeks --
a claim that Mexican President Felipe Calderon has dismissed as "pure
fiction" -- McMahon said that $150 million of the confiscated money
was part of an illegal "slush fund" amassed by the party in Mexico's
2006 presidential campaign, cash that his client had been forced to
safeguard.

McMahon said that when an independent panel in Mexico began
investigating questionable fundraising in the presidential campaign,
political supporters of Calderon urged Ye Gon to travel to the United
States -- setting him up, McMahon said, for the bust. "This is
essentially a staged drug raid, a complete fraud," he said.

McMahon said that his client's life is in danger and that a team of
black-suited men who claimed to be DEA agents recently broke into an
apartment in Las Vegas and said they were searching for Ye Gon.

DEA officials in Washington have said that they were involved in no
such raid.

McMahon said his client is an honest pharmaceuticals executive. He was
"shocked and surprised" this spring, McMahon said, when U.S. law
enforcement officials seemed uninterested in discussing Ye Gon's claim
that the money seized at his mansion was not entirely his and that the
drug charges had been fabricated.

"They'd be faced with undoing what they are calling the largest
seizure of drug cash in the world," McMahon said.

DEA spokesman Garrison Courtney said the DEA considered the evidence
carefully before bringing the charges. "We're pretty thorough in our
investigations," he said. "We tend not to bring indictments unless
we've done the amount of work that we need to do."

Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora called the arrest
"magnificent news" and said Mexican officials would file for
extradition, according to the Associated Press.

They have charged Ye Gon, who lived in a Mediterranean-style mansion
in Mexico City's posh Las Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood, with
production of methamphetamine, possession of firearms and conducting
operations with illegal proceeds.

U.S. authorities said nothing in court yesterday about extradition.
They have charged Ye Gon with violating U.S. drug laws in connection
with the alleged chemical sales because, they said, he knew or should
have known that much of the methamphetamine eventually would be sold
to users in the United States.

After the raid on his house, Ye Gon launched a public relations
campaign, with help from lawyers in Washington, in his defense.

In an interview with the Associated Press in New York this month, he
alleged that Mexico's future labor secretary, Javier Lozano, who was
then working on Calderon's campaign, forced him to safeguard the
millions, threatening to harm him if he failed to do so. The money
would be used to finance Calderon's campaign and to carry out
"terrorist" activities if Calderon lost, Ye Gon said. Mexican
government officials have called the allegations preposterous.

Ye Gon's attorneys held a news conference July 18 at the National
Press Club. Ye Gon, in an undisclosed location, took questions by phone.

The lawyers said Ye Gon intended to apply for political asylum in the
United States. His immigration status is unclear. He had traveled to
the Washington area to consult with his lawyers after his girlfriend
was arrested in Las Vegas on sealed charges.

DEA agent Steve Robertson said authorities Monday night searched a
house in Wheaton where Ye Gon had been staying. According to
neighbors, land records and a law enforcement official who spoke on
the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing, the red-brick
house, in the 2600 block of Blueridge Avenue, is owned by Ning Ye, one
of Ye Gon's attorneys. Attempts to reach the attorney for comment on
the search were unsuccessful.

Authorities began a stakeout there earlier in the day, then broke down
the front door after 9 p.m., neighbors said. They said agents spent
hours packaging evidence.

"It was like something out of 'Cops,' " said one neighbor, Mia
Kisumbi, 33, referring to the reality TV show. She said agents at one
point brought Ye Gon to the house in handcuffs and escorted him inside.

At P.J. Rice Bistro on Monday night, customers and employees barely
had time to understand the goings-on. Ye Gon, with his female
companion, was neatly dressed in a suit and tie, according to a
restaurant host who asked, for privacy reasons, that his name not published.

Ye Gon seemed a "nice, tall guy," the host said.

About 8:30 p.m., a waitress took their orders: appetizers and two
entrees, including codfish and carrots.

Shortly after they ordered, the host said, seven or eight agents came
in through the front and side entrances. They wore bulletproof vests
and carried guns. Some waited by the exits while others approached the
table and quickly led Ye Gon out a side door. It was unclear what
happened to his dining companion.

The other patrons went back to their meals -- now with a story to tell
about an exciting thing they saw happen at the mall.