Great Cooperation

Upon first skimming an article about a recent large drug bust, I wasn’t sure whom one of the officers was referring to. Jack Riley, special agent with the DEA commented that in his 25 years of drug enforcement, he hasn't seen cooperation work as well as it had “in this effort.” I had to go back up the article a ways to discover that Riley was with the DEA, and so he was definitely talking about the fact that the DEA and the Milwaukee police and other agencies here in Wisconsin and across the country had worked together to investigate and bring to justice 35 people who had a vast system going for quite a while.

The reason I wondered is that I was amazed at how very organized the whole illegal system was. Other stories have pointed out that there are guys with MBA’s that head up some of the drug trafficking groups, and that they use current methods of salesmanship and bookkeeping to keep their businesses going. So it shouldn’t surprise us, I guess, that on June 2, 2011 Riley and others announced that a group that was working in Wisconsin, Washington, British Columbia, Minnesota, and Northern Illinois.

The system actually fed off of two addictive behaviors. British Columbia and the Seattle, Washington area raised the marijuana and transported great quantities of it to our tri-state area. Then the money from the sales and also from an illegal gambling business was transported back to British Columbia and Washington State to purchase more from the suppliers. The DEA report stated that, “The gambling charge is the first of its kind in the Eastern District of Wisconsin in decades and involves the defendants managing a sophisticated sports betting operation in Southeast Wisconsin and Northern Illinois that generated tens of thousands of dollars weekly.”

Over $1.3 million in cash was seized from various locations, along with 25 lbs. of marijuana and a number of guns and other items.

The report detailed the great number of investigators and agencies that were involved in this effort. So, we might say that even though the drug traffickers/illegal gambling promoters had an impressive business going, those fighting it won out in the end.