On June 15 of this year, the finance ministry in Mexico announced new anti-money laundering regulations designed to restrict the amount of U.S. dollars that banks in Mexico could legally receive.

An advisory from the Department of Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) notes that these new regulations are intended to mitigate the risks of laundering crime proceeds that may be tied to the trafficking or narcotics or organized crime.

The new regulations are meant to thwart the movement of bushels of cash between the United States and Mexico as a significant amount of the U.S. currency flowing through Mexico is derived from illegal activity, specifically drug sales in the United States.

As for the increased focus on Las Vegas, this is one city that is very cash-intensive, making it attractive for those drug cartels needing to get their cash into the banking system without being noticed. This will mean increased monitoring in Las Vegas will be needed.

While the IRS and other officials will pay close attention to cash-intensive establishments, including nightclubs, massage parlors, strip clubs and others, they will also rely on Currency Transaction Reports banks must file on their customers.

Their tasks will be difficult, given Nevada’s Limited Liability Corporation laws that are often used by shell corporations, drug traffickers, scam operations and money launderers in an effort to conceal identities and source finances outside of the watchful eye. It will be an ongoing battle to fight the surge that is sure to come.
 

However, the DDLA also allows family members to sue drug dealers for emotional distress caused by their loved one’s addiction. The DDLA was adopted in California in the mid-1990s, due in part to the advocacy of actor Carroll O’Connor, whose son committed suicide after years of illegal drug use. A recent case in Sonoma County is an example of this novel approach to drug dealer liability.

Cynthia Siciliano of San Rafael filed suit against her husband’s former mistress under California’s DDLA statue. Siciliano claimed that Jodie Graham-Potts supplied drugs to her boyfriend, Sicilian’s husband, resulting in his drug addiction, which ruined their lives. The husband testified against his former mistress at the trial.

The affair between Graham-Potts and Marc Anthony Siciliano, a former minor-league ball player, began when Graham-Potts was a driver for the family’s limo company. Shortly thereafter, she introduced him to freebasing cocaine, an activity that the couple engaged in repeatedly during their two-year affair.

One of the more salacious details of this bizarre case was the introduction of a videotape that showed Graham-Potts giving Siciliano cocaine and, later, the couple engaging in an hour-long sex session.

In her defense, Graham-Potts argued that Mr. Siciliano was not telling the truth and had a history of drug use before she met him. She also claimed that his wife was filing suit simply to get revenge against Graham-Potts for having an affair with her husband. During the trial, Graham-Potts refused to answer certain questions about her own drug use, citing the Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate herself, in case of a criminal indictment.

During the trial, the Plaintiffs argued that they had a happy marriage for the first seven years. However when the affair started, the husband became abusive and had trouble sleeping at appropriate times; the limo business also started to suffer.
During Christmas 2007, after the affair was over, Siciliano’s wife discovered a drug/sex video of Siciliano and his mistress which showed the couple sharing a crack pipe. When confronted by his wife, Siciliano admitted that the affair had been going on for two years but was over. The mistress claims that she broke off the relationship when he broke her nose in a drug-induced rage.

During the 10-day trial, Siciliano admitted to past meth use but revealed smoking crack changed his life and caused him to become abusive. He also started to neglect caring for his daughter while his wife was at work. Because of his behavior, Siciliano was disfellowshipped by the Jehova’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall, exacerbating the pain and humiliation suffered by his family.
Siciliano placed the blame for his behavior squarely on the shoulders of his mistress; she would cook the drugs for him because he did not know how. The Siciliano’s asked the jury to consider $100,000 as the starting point of a damage award, along with punitive damages for, what they perceived to be, Graham-Potts’ maliciously getting Siciliano hooked on crack.

However a jury of four men and eight women declined, finding Graham-Potts not liable for the family’s emotional distress after only three hours of deliberation. One juror claimed that the plaintiffs failed to prove that the defendant actually provided drugs to Siciliano, a required element in a California Drug Dealer Liability case.

http://www.pressdemocrat.com/

During the event, medical personnel contacted authorities after witnessing several attendees suffering from what they believed to be Ecstasy-induced drug overdose. The individuals were taken to nearby San Francisco General Hospital via ambulance, where they were found to be experiencing typical overdose symptoms such as hyperpyrexia and dehydration, but were also experiencing severe and critical internal conditions such as kidney failure as well as internal bleeding, which is not common in Ecstasy overdose cases. The man, Anthony Mata, was one of three attendees to first be taken to the hospital. Mr. Mata was pronounced dead on Sunday evening while the other two patients remained in critical condition. Two patients who became stabilized by Monday told authorities that they purchased their drugs outside of the event.

Drug distribution at the rave has remained constant in the past few years. In 2008, police made 58 arrests on drug sales and possession charges and confiscated over 1,000 tablets of Ecstasy. This year, undercover officers arrested 70 individuals on drug-related charges related to the sale or possession of over 800 Ecstasy tablets as well as LSD, methamphetamine, and cocaine. The Daly City police department issued a statement on Monday that they believed certain drugs sold and used at the rave were tainted with an unknown toxic substance. More will be known after toxicology reports have been completed on the narcotics confiscated during the arrests. Authorities are now looking to apprehend the individuals responsible for the possibly tainted drugs. Health officials have cautioned the public to seek medical attention if they attended the rave and are experiencing any similar symptoms as the victims such as fluctuations in body temperature, dehydration, fatigue, or faintness.

The drug-related illnesses have caused alarm among the San Francisco medical staff, police, and public health officials since most of the attendees at the rave are young adults. Drug dealers sometimes haphazardly or purposefully lace their product with toxic substances. Outside substances can possibly become mixed with the pure narcotic during the cutting process, or dealers may intentionally mix the pure substance with another narcotic to intensify the intoxication experience or help induce stronger levels of drug dependency to assure their customers’ return sale. In 2008, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) estimated that over 2.1 million Americans used MDMA that year. NIDA cautions that MDMA has been gaining a false reputation as a ‘safe drug’ among young adults in recent years, despite the fact that MDMA causes severe harmful effects that can lead to permanent physiological and neurological damage or result in death.

References

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/us/01rave.html?src=me

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/01/BAL31DNJFV.DTL

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/05/31/1-dead-10-sick-from-tainted-drugs-at-rave/UPI-27611275364399/

http://www.nida.nih.gov/DrugPages/MDMA.html

http://www.nida.nih.gov/ResearchReports/MDMA/
 

Perez has been charged with five counts of aggravated robbery, one count of aggravated kidnapping and one count of burglary habitation. A member of the Partido Revolucionario Mexicano gang, Perez confessed to the crimes.

“All this talk, all the news stories, all the rhetoric being given about possible spillover crime is overshadowing a real, tangible criminal problem that we have,” Sheriff Treviño said. “We cannot afford to lose focus.”

With origins in Mexico, the Partido Revolucionario Mexicano gang consists primarily of criminal illegal immigrants. Perez is a United States citizen and was previously convicted in 2007 for burglary. He spent less than two years in prison.

This latest series of crimes committed by Perez began in March when he told deputies he had robbed a convenience store at knife point. He robbed the same store later that month and again in May. Perez is still being held with a bond set at $3.5 million.

Authorities continue to warn that violence is spilling over from Mexico into the states. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety, spillover is Mexican cartel-related violence that occurs in Texas. This violence can include aggravated assault, extortion, kidnapping, torture, rape and murder.

The federal government and many local authorities, however, define spillover very differently, calling it deliberate, planned attacks by the cartels. They do not associated violence involving Texas-based gangs with ties to Mexico with spillover violence.
 

The New York Times reported that on the other side of this “Jurassic” gate is a brutal war as drug gangs continue to force fearful families from the Mexican town of El Porvenir. Many of these families are fleeing to the border, seeking political asylum. Drug gangs have laid waste to many once peaceful Mexican towns, burning down houses and killing people in the streets.

“It’s very hard over there,” said Vicente Burciaga, who fled El Porvenir a month ago with his wife, Mayra, and their infant son. The Burciagas witnessed gang members burn down five homes in their neighborhood and kill a neighbor.

“They are killing people over there who have nothing to do with drug trafficking,” he said. “They kill you just for having seen what they are doing.”

As the violence among drug gangs continues to spiral out of control in Mexico, more and more of its citizens are seeking refuge in the United States – an irony given the U.S. is the largest consumer of drugs trafficked through Mexico.

For Fort Hancock, once peaceful rhythms have been replaced with police cars prowling dusty streets and high fears among residents. Roughly 2,000 people live there, in ramshackle trailer homes, weather-battered recreational vehicles and well-kept brick houses.

While many of its citizens seek peace, there are still children among the refugees who belong to families involved in the drug trade. Rival gang members have threatened them, introducing gangland killings to the high school.

“Some of the families who are fleeing from Mexico are doing it because they were somehow participating in these acts,” said Jose G. Franco, the school superintendent, “and if you want to get at somebody, you get at their children.”

On August 7, 2009, Uitdenhowen spent the night at the unidentified suspect’s house in Lyden. The next morning, two other teens arrived at the house to purchase Ecstasy from the suspect. Uitdenhowen also purchased Ecstasy, and they took the pills together as a group.

Evidence suggests that Uitdenhowen exhibited signs of overdose prior to lapsing into unconsciousness. He was sweating, staggering, and his eyes were rolling back into his head. The suspect warned the other teens present at the time not to call for help, as they would get in trouble and go to jail; the teens then left. The suspect let Uitdenhowen suffer unaided for three hours before calling an ambulance.

The suspect, however, tells a different version of events. He claims that the overdose occurred around 2:00 p.m., when he returned home from a walk to find the victim in distress. The suspect claims that he called his father fifteen minutes later, who arrived within the half hour. The ambulance was called at 3:00 p.m. When help arrived the suspect was not at home, but his father was. Aaron was unconscious and had a body temperature of 107.6 degrees.

The suspect’s father initially disputed claims that his son provided drugs to the victim. The father told the victim’s mother that Aaron had committed suicide. The father accused Aaron of stealing 30 Vicodin tables from the medicine cabinet and ingesting them in order to kill himself. However, there was no evidence that Uitdenhowen was suicidal.

Police became suspicious that foul play was involved after people at the home gave conflicting accounts of the incident. Police were able to piece together what happened through interviews of the residents and search warrants for messages and calls on their cell phones. The father would later admit that he had sold the Vicodin tablets to a third party, and lied to investigators in order to create a diversion away from his son. He also said that his son had left the scene prior to the ambulance arriving in order to hide the drugs elsewhere.

A review of a security tape from a nearby shopping center showed the suspect returning home with another teen around 11:40a, which is consistent with the other teen’s claim of going to the house in the morning to purchase Ecstasy.

Court documents contend that doctors found Vicodin, Valium, Ecstasy, cocaine and marijuana in the teen’s system and that he suffered massive organ failure, which lead to his death in a hospital two days later. He had never regained consciousness.

Prosecutors in Washington State have charged Aaron’s friend with controlled-substance homicide, second-degree manslaughter, and two counts of dealing Ecstasy and Vicodin. It is alleged that the suspect provided the younger boy with the fatal doses of Ecstasy and cocaine. Controlled-substance homicide is a class B felony in Washington. In order to make a case against the teen, prosecutors must prove that he provided the drugs that killed his friend.

Controlled-substance homicides are not a new phenomenon in Washington State. On January 1, 2007, 16-year-old Danielle McCarthy from Puyallup, Washington died from an overdose after her friend, Dona Huertas, gave her Ecstasy and refused to allow others to call for help.

On December 31, 2006, McCarthy, Huertas, and David Morris drove from Puyallup to the University of Washington’s Greek Row in Edmonds to attend Greek New Year’s Eve parties. Sadly, McCarthy’s parents believed that she was safely spending the holiday at a slumber party. During the course of the evening, witnesses observed McCarthy taking Ecstasy that Huertas had purchased from Morris.

After taking a second dose of Ecstasy, McCarthy became ill. Over the next eight hours she would repeatedly vomit, wet her pants, collapse, beg for her mother and, finally suffer a seizure. By 4 a.m. she was incoherent and drifting out of consciousness at a house party in Edmonds. Two hours later, when someone tried to wake her, her face was cold and her lips were blue. Police allege that Huertas ordered people not to intervene and she and Morris eventually drove McCarthy to the hospital, where she later died.

Morris, already an adult, pleaded guilty to controlled-substance homicide and was sentenced to five years in prison; he will spend part of that time in drug treatment.

Although Huertas, at teen at the time, was initially charged with controlled-substance homicide in juvenile court, prosecutors later amended the charge to first-degree manslaughter and transferred the case to adult court. Huertas had maintained that McCarthy’s death was an accident.

In June 2008, a jury acquitted Huertas of first-degree manslaughter and, instead, found her guilty of controlled-substance homicide and second-degree manslaughter. This made it possible for the case to be moved back to juvenile court for sentencing; an adult sentence would have been about six years in prison. The judge gave Huertas a sentence of two years in juvenile detention. She will be eligible for release on her twenty-first birthday. Judge Ellen Fair determined that a standard juvenile sentence of between zero and thirty days was grossly inadequate given that Huertas was a danger to the community; she failed to help her vulnerable friend in her time of need.

In an effort to encourage people to come to the aid of others who are overdosing, earlier this year Washington Governor Chris Gregoire signed into law a bill that grants legal immunity to people who call to report a drug overdose. Washington is only the second state in the country to have such a law; New Mexico’s law has been on the books since 2007.

Under the new law, people who seek help for someone who is overdosing on drugs would not face charges for possession of drugs. However, he or she could still be charged with the manufacture or sale of drugs. The law also exempts the overdosing individual from prosecution, as well as anyone for whom evidence of wrongdoing was discovered only because medical assistance was summoned. Further, the bill allows people to use Naloxone, which counteracts the effects of a drug overdose, without being fearful of prosecution, provided that it is used to help someone who is actively overdosing.
 

A Lowestoft Journal report showed Ellen George and her partner, Richard Davison, ran a company called Crompton Marine that supplied high-speed inflatable boats to international drug smugglers. George has been ordered by a court to repay £1.9m that she made from crime.

Colville Road inflatable boats were used to run drugs from the north coast of Africa to the southern cost of Spain. George admitted she had possessed criminal property and five offences of conspiring to defraud the Inland Revenue. She was given a two-year suspended prison sentence.

While the prosecution and defense had agreed that George and her partner had profited more than the assessed amount in the drug smuggling operation, George’s legal representatives contested the larger amount, claiming her realizable assets were less than the agreed amount she had made from her crimes.

The Ipswich Crown Court had heard from prosecution counsel that George and Davison owned a number of properties worth just under £3m and she had a 50 percent interest in an investment company. All told, she was left with assets of more than £2.7m. If George fails to pay the full amount owed, she will face a six-year prison sentence.

George’s home was raided in March of 2004. Roughly 70 officers had made coordinated raids in Spain and England. Davison was arrested in Spain, but has since gone on the run. George’s defense attorney claimed George had not realized Davison was involved with drug runners and thought he was helping to supply boats to tobacco smugglers.
 

Barrio Azteca gang members are heavily tattooed and have long operated across the border in El Paso. Much of their activity surrounds dealing drugs and stealing cars. Across the Rio Grande, however, the organization now specializes in contract killing for the Juarez drug cartel.

Law enforcement officers estimate members of Barrio Azteca may be involved in as many as half of the 2,660 killings in Juarez in the past year. In many cases, gang members locate targets, stalk them and finally strike in brazen ambushes that often involve multiple chase cars, coded radio communications, coordinated blocking maneuvers and disciplined firepower.

"Within their business of killing, they have surveillance people, intel people and shooters. They have a degree of specialization," said David Cuthbertson, special agent in charge of the FBI’s El Paso division, in the Washington Post. "They work day in and day out, with a list of people to kill, and they get proficient at it."

According to Juarez mayor, José Reyes Ferriz, the city is densely dotted with safe houses, armories and garages with stolen cars for the assassins’ use. Ferriz recently received a death threat in a note left beside a pig’s head in the city. Complicating the issue is that the gang works for the Juarez cartel, which includes an enforcement element composed of a number of former Juarez police officers.

"There has to be some form of training going on," said an anti-gang detective with the El Paso sheriff’s department, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the nature of his work. "I don’t know who, and I don’t know where. But how else would you explain how they operate?"

In one operation, smugglers hid 150kg of ketamine between boxes of vibhuthi, which is sacred ash used by Hindus during their worship, to move the drug unnoticed. Drugs have also been hidden in water heaters, television sets, cooking utensils and even soaking clothing with liquid drugs and wearing them across borders to avoid detection

According to customs deputy enforcement director Datuk Mohamed Khalid Yusuf, smugglers were getting desperate and were willing to resort to just about any method to bring in the drugs for profit.

"These syndicates have no regard for human welfare, religion or anything. For them, it’s all about money. Most of the time, they copy tactics used by smugglers in other countries,” said Yusuf.

“For example, soaking clothes in drugs was used by the Mexicans in the 1970s to smuggle drugs into the United States. Though they were able to retrieve only about 60 per cent later, it was still profitable for them."

In 2009, the department seized $25.74 million worth of drugs, and increase of 254.5 percent from 2008. While this rate of seizure is a success, there is still concern over the jump in the number of cases from 31 in 2008 to 76 in 2009.

"In January alone we had two cases with RM7.7 million (S$3.176 million) worth of drugs seized. Multiply that by 12 months, and it could reach RM100 million (S$41.25 million) by the end of the year. Though we have a high success rate in seizing drugs, it is possible that a lot more may slip through."
 

"There is an increase in Mexican drug cartel related violence in the northern Mexican border cities," stated DPS director Steven C. McCraw in the press release. "Parents should not allow their children to visit these Mexican cities because their safety cannot be guaranteed."

In addition to this release, the U.S. Department of State issued a travel alert that is not expected to expire until August 20. According to their website, Mexican drug cartels are in the midst of violent conflict among themselves and with Mexican security services. This fight for control can involve innocent bystanders who happen to be in the wrong place at the right time.

Assaults, murders and kidnappings have been reported by the State Department in specific Mexican cities, including Juarez, Tijuana, Chihuahua City, Nogales, Matamoras, Reynosa, and Monterrey.

South Padre Island is a popular spring break destination and one that is not always easily associated with the Mexican border. It is important to note that this southern location is a mere 30 miles from Matamoras.

Rumors surrounding the news reports suggest the media is simply hyping the violence that has not changed in the past 10 years. For those sending their youth south, it is worth further investigation.