T
The420Guy
Guest
While every major city has a retail drug trade directed at consumers,
Tucson supplies all of them.
Take, for example, David Harvan's case. In the late 1980s and early
1990s, Harvan came to Tucson about 25 times to buy and send loads to
Virginia.
"In Tucson, there was tons of marijuana sitting here on any given
day," said Harvan, of Bisbee. "Sometimes we'd go see four or five
loads in an afternoon. It was just like shopping."
Harvan pleaded guilty to marijuana trafficking and spent more than two
years in state prison. The former electrician returned to Bisbee to
re-launch his brewery, Electric Brewing.
Investigators say there has been even more marijuana passing through
the city in recent years.
"Historically, there have been connections between people in Southern
Arizona and people in Mexico in the marijuana distribution network.
Over time that's just grown," said Raymond L. Vinsik, director of the
Arizona High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a federal intelligence
and anti-drug coordinating center known as HIDTA.
Traffickers working here spend money like anyone else - on business
and personal costs such as housing, vehicles and food. They earn that
money by marking up the price of each marijuana load to cover expenses
and make a profit.
Take the case of William S. Fusci, a Tucson man who has acknowledged
being a link in the chain of the local marijuana economy and is
scheduled for sentencing Dec. 21.
Drug Enforcement Administration agents investigating Fusci last year
found that for one 400-pound load he paid $550 a pound to a Tucson
supplier, according to federal court documents. When Fusci sold
marijuana to Robert R. Boswell in Florida, he usually charged about
$1,000 per pound, Boswell said in a plea agreement this year. The
difference, in this case $450, is the Tucson distributor's markup.
In his plea agreement, Boswell, who is scheduled to be sentenced
Monday for conspiring to distribute marijuana, acknowledged buying
around 5,000 pounds of marijuana per year from Fusci in recent years.
Fusci, 41, distributed pot loads for nine years, according to the
indictment against him.
"While we're pending sentencing, there's nothing we can say," said
Fusci's attorney, Mike Bloom.
Law-enforcement records show that in 2000, officers seized 291,994
pounds of marijuana in Tucson and Southern Arizona areas that feed
into the city, from Douglas to the Tohono O'odham Reservation.
Drug investigators don't know what percentage of total traffic they
seize, but they estimate the top possibility at 20 percent. Using this
estimate, 1.17 million pounds of marijuana made it to the Old Pueblo
in 2000.
At a markup of $300 per pound, an amount suggested by interviews with
five traffickers, investigators and court records, Tucson made $350
million on wholesale marijuana sales last year.
Changing the percent seized or average markup yields a broad range of
marijuana-related revenues, from as little as $88 million to as much
as $1.3 billion. Add to that the approximately $75 million the federal
government spent locally in 2000 on agencies partially or wholly
dedicated to fighting drugs, and marijuana distribution rivaled the
optics industry. Optics firms, working to earn Tucson the title
"Optics Valley" with products from headlights to telescopes, made
about $650 million last year.
"Brand-New, Fresh Dollars"
At around $350 million in revenues and $75 million in federal
expenditures, marijuana added 2 percent to the area's total personal
income of $20.7 billion in 2000.
"That's pretty large," said UA economist Marshall Vest. Since most of
the marijuana that moves through Tucson is distributed to the rest of
North America, Vest said, "It represents a flow of brand-new, fresh
dollars into the community."
Economists calculate the spinoff effects of legitimate industries by
looking at the jobs and wages created when employees spend money in
the community. This "multiplier effect" would be impossible to
determine with marijuana distribution, said Vera Pavlakovich-Kochi,
program director at the University of Arizona's Office of Economic
Development. The reason: No one can track how much marijuana money
stays in the area.
A study Pavlakovich-Kochi conducted in 1997 provides a clue. She
looked at the economic impact of the fresh-produce industry on Nogales
and Rio Rico. The marketing services segment of the produce industry -
the sector that mirrors the role Tucson plays in the marijuana
industry - generated $376.4 million, which created a multiplier effect
of 6,052 jobs and $159 million in wages.
No direct comparison can be made between Nogales-Rio Rico produce
marketing and marijuana distribution in Tucson, she cautioned. Still,
she said, "definitely there is an impact on the economy. There is no
doubt about it."
The beneficiaries of the marijuana trade, most of them unknowing,
range from "real estate agents to car dealerships to titling
companies," said Pennie Gillette, an Arizona Department of Public
Safety lieutenant who directs the Arizona High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area intelligence center here.
Those in the hospitality industry also get an added boost from
traffickers' frequent meetings.
"When they meet," said Vinsik, Gillette's supervisor at Arizona HIDTA,
"they want to meet at fancy hotels and have fancy dinners and
negotiate their deals."
Capitalizing On Mexico Ties
To understand why the money flows to Tucson, look south.
where investigators found 472 pounds of marijuana June 20.
"We knew there was something going on," said neighbor Roy Jackson. "In
the last few days it was one car after another."
Final Link In Marijuana Chain
Usually, the landlord has no knowledge of the illegal purposes of
tenants who are stash-house operators, drug investigators said. But in
one recent case, authorities accused the landlords of being active
participants.
In January 2000, MANTIS officers were investigating a ring of Jamaican
marijuana traffickers operating here when they seized 1,500 pounds
from townhouses in the Belle Vista development near East Speedway and
North Camino Seco. That led to an undercover operation against the
owners of several rental townhouses, according to an affidavit filed
by Tucson police Officer Roger Nusbaum.
Late last year, owner Gregory T. Shepis began renting to undercover
MANTIS agents who said they discussed with him their need to store
loads of marijuana, according to an indictment issued by a Pima County
grand jury.
The agents said they showed Shepis, 64, a load of 214 pounds of
marijuana stored in one of his units and gave him a pound of pot in
place of a security deposit, the indictment says.
Shepis and his wife, Michelle, are facing trial Feb. 12 on felony
charges, including marijuana conspiracy and money laundering. Both
deny the charges.
Gregory Shepis' attorney said the undercover officers, who wore
recording devices during their conversations with Shepis, entrapped
him. The attorney, Stanton Bloom, said Shepis charged the usual rent
to the undercover officers and made no additional money from their
supposed marijuana trafficking.
Added Michelle Shepis: "I certainly would never have rented to anybody if
they were in any way bad. If they're going to set you up, they're going to
set you up, and they're not going to tell you till it's too late."
When the marijuana arrives at Tucson stash houses, the suppliers
either send it directly to a regular customer or must find a buyer.
That's where another link in the economic chain steps in - deal-makers
who know the haunts and personalities of the local drug trade.
DEA agents arrested one such deal-maker, Jorge Zuniga, last year in
their investigation of the ring led by Tucson distributor Fusci.
Zuniga arranged a 230-pound marijuana sale to Fusci, DEA agent Timothy
Bartels said in a criminal complaint. For connecting the supplier and
buyer, Zuniga received $25 per pound, or $5,750, Bartels said.
Zuniga pleaded guilty Nov. 6 to conspiring to possess marijuana with
intent to distribute.
The final link in the Tucson chain is the distributor, who may be
connected to a Mexican organization or may have a separate group. The
Tucson distributor usually makes in the range of $100 to $500 per
pound, investigators and traffickers said, but takes whatever price
the market will bear.
"It's just like dealing with any kind of commodity in private
industry," said James A. Woolley, the assistant special agent in
charge of the DEA's Tucson office. "You come here and you're going to
get a better price. That's worth the risk of transporting it back to
wherever and selling at a markup."
Business Of Drug Interdiction
During the 25 or so years since Tucson became an important player in
the international marijuana trade, the city has also become a drug-war
nerve center. A Star analysis of federal agencies involved in drug
enforcement found they spent about $75 million in Tucson during the
fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
About three-quarters of the convictions they produced were marijuana
cases, according to Arizona federal court figures. Tucson's federal
court saw 976 drug cases in the year ending Sept. 30, 2000.
Anti-drug agencies such as the U.S. Customs Service and DEA have large
offices here, focused primarily on drug investigations. A typical
special agent makes at least $60,000 per year.
But the federal agency here that makes the most marijuana seizures is
the Border Patrol, which has a station on East Golf Links Road and a
sector headquarters on West Ajo Way. The primary duty of that agency
is to enforce immigration laws, but the agents work between ports of
entry where marijuana loads often cross the border.
The Border Patrol spent more than $23 million on its Tucson offices
and employees last year.
Federal tax dollars also flow here to lesser known anti-drug
agencies.
There's the Arizona High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a secretive
body with a $12.4 million budget. HIDTA has a large, unmarked building
near Tucson International Airport, where 240 people work.
Many of them are intelligence analysts, some with CIA-level security
clearance. Others are officers from agencies as diverse as the Tucson
Police Department, the Arizona National Guard and the FBI, working
together in a variety of task forces. That blending is meant to break
down the traditional rivalries between agencies.
"Our job is to make people want to work together, and the carrot, of
course, is the money," Vinsik said.
Another little-known agency is the U.S. Customs Service Air Branch,
the largest operation of its kind in the country and based at
Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. It helps track smugglers on the ground
along the border, conducts surveillance above Tucson and pursues
suspicious cross-border flights, even across state lines.
Customs has 80 employees at the Tucson air branch, 60 of them pilots.
Another 70 aircraft mechanics, employees of private contractors such
as Raytheon, work at the air branch repairing Blackhawk helicopters
and other aircraft.
The 60 pilots make about $75,000 per year, said Dennis Lindsay, chief
of the Tucson air branch.
"Tucson is a major player in drug interdiction," Lindsay
said.
It's All Business
When drug investigators seek out local links in the marijuana chain,
they often find business owners.
Take Guillermo M. Lechuga. Accused of running a major marijuana
network, Lechuga is also the owner of a Tucson business approaching
its third decade - Superior Natural Oils International. SNOI, in
operation since 1983, produces jojoba oil and other products and sells
them to cosmetic companies around the world.
DEA agents arrested Lechuga on April 13, 1999, and he was indicted
along with 42 others on charges he operated a continuing criminal
enterprise and committed five related crimes. He has pleaded innocent
and is fighting to suppress evidence that investigators obtained
through wiretaps of various phones, including one at SNOI.
After his arrest, Georg Hieber and Edgar Zastrow, German customers of
SNOI, wrote a character reference for Lechuga, calling him a "serious,
reliable businessman" who "kept his promises."
At the time of his arrest, Lechuga employed about 10 people at the
company's office, 2555 N. Coyote Trail, just off West Grant Road,
according to court documents filed by his attorney, Alfred "Skip"
Donau. Lechuga employed others at fields near Guaymas, Sonora, and at
a processing center in Nogales, Sonora.
Lechuga paid his Tucson employees close to $400,000 per year in
salaries, Donau wrote, and the company grossed up to $6 million. Now
out on bond, Lechuga continues to run the company.
According to a sworn affidavit, DEA agents suspect Lechuga was in the
marijuana business even before he got into natural oils and that he
used SNOI as a front. The DEA's first record of Lechuga is from 1975,
when he was arrested in Phoenix in possession of 400 pounds of
marijuana, but the charges were dropped, DEA agent Tracy Donahue said
in an affidavit.
"I don't think there's any credible evidence it was used as a front,"
Donau said of the company. "I know that's not the case, or they
(federal prosecutors) would be seeking forfeiture."
Whatever the source, Lechuga amassed enough money to own a house on
North Casas Adobes Road worth around $500,000, according to the Pima
County Assessor's Office. The federal government is seeking to make
Lechuga forfeit that house, as well as about $400,000 in bank accounts
Some traffickers, like Tucsonan Jose Luis Arevalo, own companies that exist
only on paper. Arevalo was convicted in Tampa, Fla., last year of
conspiring to traffic marijuana and launder money.
During the trial, prosecutors presented a flow chart of the companies he
ran. It included three companies dedicated to real estate.
How much money went through Arevalo's companies is unknown. But a DEA
analyst explained six months worth of drug ledgers at Arevalo's trial,
federal prosecutor LaTour Lafferty said, and the jury reached its own
conclusion: $17.25 million in half a year.
Arevalo's attorney, Frank Rubino, disputed that figure.
"That was what the government believed was the gross amount of the
(marijuana) value in the indictment. Nobody got that money, because it
didn't exist,," Rubino said.
Despite the huge sums, most of the money made on the marijuana that moves
through Tucson does not stay here, drug investigators said. A Tucson
distributor who sells marijuana for $1,000 a pound in Michigan may have to
pay $600 per pound of those proceeds to his supplier in Mexico.
"The bulk of it is going back across the border," said Bill Dickinson,
chief of the Pima County Attorney's Office narcotics division.
Plus, offshore banks provide an anonymous and attractive shelter for
illicit earnings.
Money laundering within Tucson is on a small scale, usually through
businesses even smaller than Lechuga's, Dickinson said. Laundering can keep
small businesses afloat and add to corporate income taxes.
Trafficking suspect Mark E. Steele owned Alejandro's, a popular Downtown
restaurant, from December 1994 until May 2000, according to city records.
After five years as a fugitive, Steele was arrested in June on a charge of
possessing marijuana with intent to distribute. After his arrest, the only
income Steele listed on a financial affidavit was $30,000 from the sale of
the restaurant.
Steele's attorney, Sean Bruner, said Steele pleaded innocent. He is asking
that the case be combined with a related case filed against Steele in
Cleveland.
"Often what they do is have a business that is probably marginal,"
Dickinson said. If the traffickers own a pizzeria, they'll put the drug
proceeds into the business "so that the pizza place looks like it sells a
hundred pizzas a night when it only sells 10."
Newshawk: Max1204
Pubdate: Sun, 09 Dec 2001
Source: Arizona Daily Star (AZ)
Copyright: 2001 Pulitzer Publishing Co.
Contact: letters@azstarnet.com
Website: https://www.azstarnet.com/star/today/
Details: MapInc
Tucson supplies all of them.
Take, for example, David Harvan's case. In the late 1980s and early
1990s, Harvan came to Tucson about 25 times to buy and send loads to
Virginia.
"In Tucson, there was tons of marijuana sitting here on any given
day," said Harvan, of Bisbee. "Sometimes we'd go see four or five
loads in an afternoon. It was just like shopping."
Harvan pleaded guilty to marijuana trafficking and spent more than two
years in state prison. The former electrician returned to Bisbee to
re-launch his brewery, Electric Brewing.
Investigators say there has been even more marijuana passing through
the city in recent years.
"Historically, there have been connections between people in Southern
Arizona and people in Mexico in the marijuana distribution network.
Over time that's just grown," said Raymond L. Vinsik, director of the
Arizona High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a federal intelligence
and anti-drug coordinating center known as HIDTA.
Traffickers working here spend money like anyone else - on business
and personal costs such as housing, vehicles and food. They earn that
money by marking up the price of each marijuana load to cover expenses
and make a profit.
Take the case of William S. Fusci, a Tucson man who has acknowledged
being a link in the chain of the local marijuana economy and is
scheduled for sentencing Dec. 21.
Drug Enforcement Administration agents investigating Fusci last year
found that for one 400-pound load he paid $550 a pound to a Tucson
supplier, according to federal court documents. When Fusci sold
marijuana to Robert R. Boswell in Florida, he usually charged about
$1,000 per pound, Boswell said in a plea agreement this year. The
difference, in this case $450, is the Tucson distributor's markup.
In his plea agreement, Boswell, who is scheduled to be sentenced
Monday for conspiring to distribute marijuana, acknowledged buying
around 5,000 pounds of marijuana per year from Fusci in recent years.
Fusci, 41, distributed pot loads for nine years, according to the
indictment against him.
"While we're pending sentencing, there's nothing we can say," said
Fusci's attorney, Mike Bloom.
Law-enforcement records show that in 2000, officers seized 291,994
pounds of marijuana in Tucson and Southern Arizona areas that feed
into the city, from Douglas to the Tohono O'odham Reservation.
Drug investigators don't know what percentage of total traffic they
seize, but they estimate the top possibility at 20 percent. Using this
estimate, 1.17 million pounds of marijuana made it to the Old Pueblo
in 2000.
At a markup of $300 per pound, an amount suggested by interviews with
five traffickers, investigators and court records, Tucson made $350
million on wholesale marijuana sales last year.
Changing the percent seized or average markup yields a broad range of
marijuana-related revenues, from as little as $88 million to as much
as $1.3 billion. Add to that the approximately $75 million the federal
government spent locally in 2000 on agencies partially or wholly
dedicated to fighting drugs, and marijuana distribution rivaled the
optics industry. Optics firms, working to earn Tucson the title
"Optics Valley" with products from headlights to telescopes, made
about $650 million last year.
"Brand-New, Fresh Dollars"
At around $350 million in revenues and $75 million in federal
expenditures, marijuana added 2 percent to the area's total personal
income of $20.7 billion in 2000.
"That's pretty large," said UA economist Marshall Vest. Since most of
the marijuana that moves through Tucson is distributed to the rest of
North America, Vest said, "It represents a flow of brand-new, fresh
dollars into the community."
Economists calculate the spinoff effects of legitimate industries by
looking at the jobs and wages created when employees spend money in
the community. This "multiplier effect" would be impossible to
determine with marijuana distribution, said Vera Pavlakovich-Kochi,
program director at the University of Arizona's Office of Economic
Development. The reason: No one can track how much marijuana money
stays in the area.
A study Pavlakovich-Kochi conducted in 1997 provides a clue. She
looked at the economic impact of the fresh-produce industry on Nogales
and Rio Rico. The marketing services segment of the produce industry -
the sector that mirrors the role Tucson plays in the marijuana
industry - generated $376.4 million, which created a multiplier effect
of 6,052 jobs and $159 million in wages.
No direct comparison can be made between Nogales-Rio Rico produce
marketing and marijuana distribution in Tucson, she cautioned. Still,
she said, "definitely there is an impact on the economy. There is no
doubt about it."
The beneficiaries of the marijuana trade, most of them unknowing,
range from "real estate agents to car dealerships to titling
companies," said Pennie Gillette, an Arizona Department of Public
Safety lieutenant who directs the Arizona High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Area intelligence center here.
Those in the hospitality industry also get an added boost from
traffickers' frequent meetings.
"When they meet," said Vinsik, Gillette's supervisor at Arizona HIDTA,
"they want to meet at fancy hotels and have fancy dinners and
negotiate their deals."
Capitalizing On Mexico Ties
To understand why the money flows to Tucson, look south.
where investigators found 472 pounds of marijuana June 20.
"We knew there was something going on," said neighbor Roy Jackson. "In
the last few days it was one car after another."
Final Link In Marijuana Chain
Usually, the landlord has no knowledge of the illegal purposes of
tenants who are stash-house operators, drug investigators said. But in
one recent case, authorities accused the landlords of being active
participants.
In January 2000, MANTIS officers were investigating a ring of Jamaican
marijuana traffickers operating here when they seized 1,500 pounds
from townhouses in the Belle Vista development near East Speedway and
North Camino Seco. That led to an undercover operation against the
owners of several rental townhouses, according to an affidavit filed
by Tucson police Officer Roger Nusbaum.
Late last year, owner Gregory T. Shepis began renting to undercover
MANTIS agents who said they discussed with him their need to store
loads of marijuana, according to an indictment issued by a Pima County
grand jury.
The agents said they showed Shepis, 64, a load of 214 pounds of
marijuana stored in one of his units and gave him a pound of pot in
place of a security deposit, the indictment says.
Shepis and his wife, Michelle, are facing trial Feb. 12 on felony
charges, including marijuana conspiracy and money laundering. Both
deny the charges.
Gregory Shepis' attorney said the undercover officers, who wore
recording devices during their conversations with Shepis, entrapped
him. The attorney, Stanton Bloom, said Shepis charged the usual rent
to the undercover officers and made no additional money from their
supposed marijuana trafficking.
Added Michelle Shepis: "I certainly would never have rented to anybody if
they were in any way bad. If they're going to set you up, they're going to
set you up, and they're not going to tell you till it's too late."
When the marijuana arrives at Tucson stash houses, the suppliers
either send it directly to a regular customer or must find a buyer.
That's where another link in the economic chain steps in - deal-makers
who know the haunts and personalities of the local drug trade.
DEA agents arrested one such deal-maker, Jorge Zuniga, last year in
their investigation of the ring led by Tucson distributor Fusci.
Zuniga arranged a 230-pound marijuana sale to Fusci, DEA agent Timothy
Bartels said in a criminal complaint. For connecting the supplier and
buyer, Zuniga received $25 per pound, or $5,750, Bartels said.
Zuniga pleaded guilty Nov. 6 to conspiring to possess marijuana with
intent to distribute.
The final link in the Tucson chain is the distributor, who may be
connected to a Mexican organization or may have a separate group. The
Tucson distributor usually makes in the range of $100 to $500 per
pound, investigators and traffickers said, but takes whatever price
the market will bear.
"It's just like dealing with any kind of commodity in private
industry," said James A. Woolley, the assistant special agent in
charge of the DEA's Tucson office. "You come here and you're going to
get a better price. That's worth the risk of transporting it back to
wherever and selling at a markup."
Business Of Drug Interdiction
During the 25 or so years since Tucson became an important player in
the international marijuana trade, the city has also become a drug-war
nerve center. A Star analysis of federal agencies involved in drug
enforcement found they spent about $75 million in Tucson during the
fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
About three-quarters of the convictions they produced were marijuana
cases, according to Arizona federal court figures. Tucson's federal
court saw 976 drug cases in the year ending Sept. 30, 2000.
Anti-drug agencies such as the U.S. Customs Service and DEA have large
offices here, focused primarily on drug investigations. A typical
special agent makes at least $60,000 per year.
But the federal agency here that makes the most marijuana seizures is
the Border Patrol, which has a station on East Golf Links Road and a
sector headquarters on West Ajo Way. The primary duty of that agency
is to enforce immigration laws, but the agents work between ports of
entry where marijuana loads often cross the border.
The Border Patrol spent more than $23 million on its Tucson offices
and employees last year.
Federal tax dollars also flow here to lesser known anti-drug
agencies.
There's the Arizona High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a secretive
body with a $12.4 million budget. HIDTA has a large, unmarked building
near Tucson International Airport, where 240 people work.
Many of them are intelligence analysts, some with CIA-level security
clearance. Others are officers from agencies as diverse as the Tucson
Police Department, the Arizona National Guard and the FBI, working
together in a variety of task forces. That blending is meant to break
down the traditional rivalries between agencies.
"Our job is to make people want to work together, and the carrot, of
course, is the money," Vinsik said.
Another little-known agency is the U.S. Customs Service Air Branch,
the largest operation of its kind in the country and based at
Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. It helps track smugglers on the ground
along the border, conducts surveillance above Tucson and pursues
suspicious cross-border flights, even across state lines.
Customs has 80 employees at the Tucson air branch, 60 of them pilots.
Another 70 aircraft mechanics, employees of private contractors such
as Raytheon, work at the air branch repairing Blackhawk helicopters
and other aircraft.
The 60 pilots make about $75,000 per year, said Dennis Lindsay, chief
of the Tucson air branch.
"Tucson is a major player in drug interdiction," Lindsay
said.
It's All Business
When drug investigators seek out local links in the marijuana chain,
they often find business owners.
Take Guillermo M. Lechuga. Accused of running a major marijuana
network, Lechuga is also the owner of a Tucson business approaching
its third decade - Superior Natural Oils International. SNOI, in
operation since 1983, produces jojoba oil and other products and sells
them to cosmetic companies around the world.
DEA agents arrested Lechuga on April 13, 1999, and he was indicted
along with 42 others on charges he operated a continuing criminal
enterprise and committed five related crimes. He has pleaded innocent
and is fighting to suppress evidence that investigators obtained
through wiretaps of various phones, including one at SNOI.
After his arrest, Georg Hieber and Edgar Zastrow, German customers of
SNOI, wrote a character reference for Lechuga, calling him a "serious,
reliable businessman" who "kept his promises."
At the time of his arrest, Lechuga employed about 10 people at the
company's office, 2555 N. Coyote Trail, just off West Grant Road,
according to court documents filed by his attorney, Alfred "Skip"
Donau. Lechuga employed others at fields near Guaymas, Sonora, and at
a processing center in Nogales, Sonora.
Lechuga paid his Tucson employees close to $400,000 per year in
salaries, Donau wrote, and the company grossed up to $6 million. Now
out on bond, Lechuga continues to run the company.
According to a sworn affidavit, DEA agents suspect Lechuga was in the
marijuana business even before he got into natural oils and that he
used SNOI as a front. The DEA's first record of Lechuga is from 1975,
when he was arrested in Phoenix in possession of 400 pounds of
marijuana, but the charges were dropped, DEA agent Tracy Donahue said
in an affidavit.
"I don't think there's any credible evidence it was used as a front,"
Donau said of the company. "I know that's not the case, or they
(federal prosecutors) would be seeking forfeiture."
Whatever the source, Lechuga amassed enough money to own a house on
North Casas Adobes Road worth around $500,000, according to the Pima
County Assessor's Office. The federal government is seeking to make
Lechuga forfeit that house, as well as about $400,000 in bank accounts
Some traffickers, like Tucsonan Jose Luis Arevalo, own companies that exist
only on paper. Arevalo was convicted in Tampa, Fla., last year of
conspiring to traffic marijuana and launder money.
During the trial, prosecutors presented a flow chart of the companies he
ran. It included three companies dedicated to real estate.
How much money went through Arevalo's companies is unknown. But a DEA
analyst explained six months worth of drug ledgers at Arevalo's trial,
federal prosecutor LaTour Lafferty said, and the jury reached its own
conclusion: $17.25 million in half a year.
Arevalo's attorney, Frank Rubino, disputed that figure.
"That was what the government believed was the gross amount of the
(marijuana) value in the indictment. Nobody got that money, because it
didn't exist,," Rubino said.
Despite the huge sums, most of the money made on the marijuana that moves
through Tucson does not stay here, drug investigators said. A Tucson
distributor who sells marijuana for $1,000 a pound in Michigan may have to
pay $600 per pound of those proceeds to his supplier in Mexico.
"The bulk of it is going back across the border," said Bill Dickinson,
chief of the Pima County Attorney's Office narcotics division.
Plus, offshore banks provide an anonymous and attractive shelter for
illicit earnings.
Money laundering within Tucson is on a small scale, usually through
businesses even smaller than Lechuga's, Dickinson said. Laundering can keep
small businesses afloat and add to corporate income taxes.
Trafficking suspect Mark E. Steele owned Alejandro's, a popular Downtown
restaurant, from December 1994 until May 2000, according to city records.
After five years as a fugitive, Steele was arrested in June on a charge of
possessing marijuana with intent to distribute. After his arrest, the only
income Steele listed on a financial affidavit was $30,000 from the sale of
the restaurant.
Steele's attorney, Sean Bruner, said Steele pleaded innocent. He is asking
that the case be combined with a related case filed against Steele in
Cleveland.
"Often what they do is have a business that is probably marginal,"
Dickinson said. If the traffickers own a pizzeria, they'll put the drug
proceeds into the business "so that the pizza place looks like it sells a
hundred pizzas a night when it only sells 10."
Newshawk: Max1204
Pubdate: Sun, 09 Dec 2001
Source: Arizona Daily Star (AZ)
Copyright: 2001 Pulitzer Publishing Co.
Contact: letters@azstarnet.com
Website: https://www.azstarnet.com/star/today/
Details: MapInc
