Before it ended in a series of raids Wednesday, the hunt for the world's biggest cartel trafficking in the designer drug Ecstasy took an international consortium of law enforcement agents from the rave clubs of Hollywood through a host of European cities.
For 15 months, the authorities--led by a Los Angeles-based team of FBI, DEA and Customs agents--played an elaborate cat-and-mouse game with Tamer Adel Ibrahim and his alleged associates. They watched as the young cadre of suspected traffickers traveled to Milan, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and elsewhere around the globe--even to Mexico, Israel and South Korea, allegedly to arrange deals.
For the Record
Los Angeles Times Monday December 4, 2000 Home Edition Metro Part B Page 3 Metro Desk 2 inches; 48 words Type of Material: Correction
Drugs--A story in Nov. 23 editions of The Times reported that federal authorities had arrested Damon Todd Kidwell, 29, of Los Angeles as a suspect in an Ecstasy trafficking ring. Federal authorities now say that while Kidwell was arrested, he was subsequently released, has not been charged "and is not being prosecuted in relation to this case."
Authorities believed the group to be perhaps the No. 1 wholesaler of a drug whose explosive growth among young people has alarmed those at the highest reaches of the U.S. Justice Department--especially because of new indications that Ecstasy may cause depression and significant brain damage among chronic users.
They said their concerns were confirmed, that wiretaps and surveillance showed that the cartel was engaged in a global enterprise, shipping literally millions of the tablets from various drops in Europe to Los Angeles, authorities said.
Ibrahim, a slight 26-year-old, allegedly ran the operation from a swank high-rise ocean-view apartment in Santa Monica while driving around town in a sleek black Range Rover, authorities say.
Capping the investigation, the Dutch National Police early Wednesday raided 17 locations in Amsterdam, arresting seven alleged co-conspirators and seizing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, as well as guns and other weapons.
And authorities in Washington and Los Angeles disclosed that Ibrahim was quietly taken into custody two months ago in connection with a shipment of more than 1.2 million Ecstasy tablets headed for Los Angeles. Ibrahim remains in custody in the Netherlands and couldn't be reached for comment.
All told, the multinational dragnet, dubbed Operation Red Tide, has seized more than 4 million doses of the drug and arrested at least 22 suspects in six U.S. cities and four European countries since July. And an additional 18 people linked to Ibrahim's operation have been arrested in various law enforcement operations around the world within the past year, authorities said.
"It's the largest Ecstasy ring in the world that we know of, and we took them down," said FBI Special Agent Matthew McLaughlin, a department spokesman in Los Angeles. "That's significant."
