11 ACCUSED OF BEING PART OF COLOMBIAN DRUG RING

Not long after they left Memorial High School in West New York, a group of
enterprising young men and women thought they had discovered an easy way to
earn up to $20,000 for only a few days' work, federal authorities said.

But there were risks.

Last year, one young man died of an overdose after a balloon filled with
heroin -he had swallowed several -broke inside him. And on Friday, some of
them were among 11 people arrested by U.S. Customs agents and accused of
participating in a Colombian drug ring.

Also arrested was a West New York man accused of recruiting Memorial High
graduates to smuggle heroin hidden inside their bodies.

"He was offering $12,000 to $20,000 for a successful smuggling trip," said
Tom Manifase, assistant special agent in charge of the Customs Service's
Newark investigations office. "Word of mouth got around to the kids, and
they got a little interest in it. For an 18- or 19-year-old kid, $20,000 is
an awful lot of cash."

Friday's arrests and raids in West New York and Queens mark the latest
development in an international probe into the trafficking ring, which
authorities said lured young people to carry heroin on cruise ships in the
Caribbean, through Mexico and Central America, and on jet flights into
airports in Texas, Florida, and New Jersey.

Authorities said the Customs agents focused on three different cells of the
Colombian-based organizations. One, based in West New York, specialized in
smuggling heroin that was encased in condoms or balloons, swallowed, and
carried inside couriers' bodies on commercial airline flights and cruise
ships, officials said.

A second cell based in Queens used another method -soaking clothing in
liquid heroin and carrying the garments in suitcases on jetliners.

Authorities said that a third cell focused on distributing the heroin, much
of it in North Jersey.

"A lot of it was being distributed in West New York and the Hudson County
area," said Martin D. Ficke, the top Customs agent in New Jersey.

Of those charged or arrested Friday, five had been enrolled at Memorial
High in recent years, Ficke said. Four other former students have been
among the couriers caught previously as they tried to smuggle heroin from
South America into airports in Newark, New York, Miami, Houston, Dallas,
and San Juan, Puerto Rico, he said.

"Here was an operation that was set up specifically to recruit Memorial
High School graduates or dropouts," Ficke said. "It's obviously disturbing
to us that you have kids that young involved in this."

Customs agents have uncovered no evidence suggesting that current students
are involved in the alleged operation or were ever recruited. Nevertheless,
Ficke said Customs has been working closely with Memorial High officials.

"They were very disturbed, and cooperated with the investigation," he said.

Ficke said that Customs agents plan to address the student body at Memorial
to warn them about the perils of signing on as a narcotics courier.

Friday's raids involved 120 Customs agents and resulted in the seizure of
18 kilograms of heroin, worth more than $1 million on the streets,
officials said. They also seized $150,000 in cash at a Queens apartment,
where agents found a pot of heroin "cooking" on a stove, officials said.

Ficke said that the clothing soaked in liquid heroin in South America is
then soaked in water in clandestine drug labs when it arrives in the U.S. A
chemical is added to the water, the pot is stirred, and then the garment is
removed. Heating the liquefied heroin solution to a simmer eventually
causes the water to evaporate, leaving behind heroin in a solid form, Ficke
said.

"They basically scrape it out of the pot," he said.

One of those arrested in New York on Friday is suspected of being the
operation's chemist, Ficke said.

Customs agents used wiretaps to monitor conversations between the drug
ring's alleged members, who often communicated in code words to mask the
illicit nature of the smuggling operation, officials said.

Five of those arrested appeared in U.S. District Court in Newark on Friday
afternoon, before Magistrate Judge Madeline Cox-Arleo. The judge ordered
all five held without bail. One of them, Dimas Escobar-Reyes, 20, of West
New York, is a recent Memorial High alumnus alleged to have been the chief
recruiter.

David Holman, a deputy public defender who represented those arrested,
declined after the hearing to comment on the charges.

Friday's operation is an outgrowth of a yearlong investigation into the
Colombian trafficking ring by Customs, the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, and the Colombian National Police. Of the 60 people
arrested in the probe to date, 23 were taken into custody in Colombia. In
November 2001, Colombian authorities closed down a clothing factory where
heroin was found inside the seams and in the fabric of garments, officials
said.

Authorities said that heroin smuggling in the metropolitan region is on the
rise. Since October, Customs inspectors at Newark International and John F.
Kennedy International airports have seized 1,634 pounds of heroin -nearly
three times the amount seized in the same period the previous year,
officials said.

In January 2001, Fabian Hurtado of Englewood died in Englewood Hospital and
Medical Center after one of the 15 heroin-filled balloons in his body
burst, officials said. Customs officials said that Hurtado was a courier
for the ring targeted Friday.