By Van Smith Baltimore City Paper BALTIMORE — Last April, thousands of miles from Baltimore in the West African country of Ghana, a man known as “Wagba” got on the phone and mediated a Baltimore heroin-dealing dispute. Nana Boateng, who supplied Baltimore dealers with heroin shipped under Wagba’s direction by couriers traveling to the United…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Now it’s the DEA’s turn. CBS News is reporting that the Justice Department Inspector General’s Office is investigating allegations that three DEA hired hookers in Colombia. The incident is unrelated to the Secret Service debacle. However, CBS reported that DEA said the initial info came from the Secret Service. OTHER STORIES…
Shoshanna Utchenik ticklethewire.com Protesters in Honduras’ Miskito Coast have burned down government offices and demanded that U.S. drug agents leave the area, following antidrug operations that killed four innocent people May 11, including two pregnant women, reports the AP. The DEA supported the raid on the Patuca River in northeastern Honduras last week, when along…
Shoshanna Utchenik ticklethewire.com U.S. officials report a break-through in tackling drug trafficking from South America, according to the Associated Press. A former Venezuelan Supreme Court justice Eladio Aponte may be seeking permanent refuge in the U.S. for himself and his family in exchange for evidence linking Venezuelan officials to drug trafficking and corruption, and linking Venezuela…
Shoshanna Utchenik ticklethewire.com Could the DEA be doing more harm than good with its efforts to curb prescription drug abuse? Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island are asking the Government Accountability Office to study how the DEA’s crackdowns on controlled substances may be creating shortages of vital prescription meds…
Shoshanna Utchenik ticklethewire.com Sometimes being a ‘friend of Israel’ means sharing criminals. Three Israeli mobsters were extradited to the U.S. in January 2011 in the first extradition of its kind under Israel’s racketeering law, which parallels RICO, the U.S. law targeting organized crime. Two of the three pled guilty to a host of drug and…
Shoshanna Utcheniik ticklethewire.com A 24 year old University of California San Diego student was one of nine people brought in by the DEA for questioning on April 21 after a drug raid. What happened next is anyone’s guess. It seems he was forgotten in a cell for five days. DEA spokeswoman Amy Roderick told the…
Shoshanna Utchenik ticklethewire.com This time it was drugs slipping through security for a few thousand in bribes. Next time? Who knows? One federal prosecutor noted that next time it could be dangerous materials. The L.A. Times reports that the DEA has busted four former and current TSA agents at LAX. They allegedly accepted cash to…
