Nine people were arrested for allegedly smuggling cocaine inside children's toy packaging. NY1 reports that "four kilograms of cocaine, four handguns, and more than $86,000" during the investigation. The suspects pleaded not guilty to charges including drug possession and money laundering; a prosecutor said, "We're investigating whether they were paid in cocaine." One employee worked in a check-cashing facility, and it's believed he laundered hundreds of thousands of dollars there, and the ringleader allegedly wired......

A tractor trailer stopped in the Bronx turned out to be carrying $16 million in cocaine. Apparently $16 million in cocaine is equal to 400 pounds, as that's how much the authorities confiscated. NY Drug Enforcement Task Force searched the vehicle at a Bruckner Boulevard parking lot. The Post reports that the investigators, "convinced that drugs were stashed in the vehicle, borrowed an X-ray machine from Homeland Security." And they were right, because after......

A man died while trying to flee the dozens of federal agents who raided a heroin mill in a Castle Hill apartment. The man jumped from a 9th floor balcony to a 6th floor balcony, but "slammed his head against a sixth-floor railing." Two other women who tried to make the same jump were hospitalized. Eleven other people tried to flee as well, but were eventually captured. They jumped down to other balconies, and one......

Two sergeants and a detective were arrested Friday after one was caught on tape providing information on surveillance vehicles to a drug dealer and the other two were caught supplying drugs and cash that they'd stolen from a supposed junkie and then returning it in exchange for information. Sgt. Roosevelt Green was a 12-year-veteran of the NYPD working out of the 62nd Precinct in Brooklyn, who was using a police laptop to run license plate......

Last November American Gangster went head-to-head with Bee Movie at the box office, but now the film faces an off-screen battle. The NY Sun reports that Former DEA agents are suing NBC Universal for being falsely depicted on-screen. They feel their characters were portrayed as villains and the lawsuit, filed yesterday in federal court in Manhattan, claims "the movie defamed hundreds of DEA agents and New York police officers by claiming at the end that......

Rudy Giuliani's good financial fortune derived from the formation of Giuliani Partners is leading to political misfortune, as yet another piece of lucrative business he conducted in the private sector has come back to haunt his candidacy. Recently, his involvement with Purdue Pharma--the producers of the painkiller OxyContin--has come under scrutiny. Giuliani is being accused of using his high profile in the wake of 9/11, his background as a federal prosecutor, and his personal reputation......

An NYPD detective was arrested in the breaking up of a Bronx drug ring this week. The bust was comprehensive and prosecutors are alleging that officer James Calderon used his inside knowledge of police activities to enable crack and heroin dealers to operate with relative impunity. James Calderon was a 13-year veteran of the force, but is now being accused of acting as an agent for Jorge and Luis Mendoza, Bronx drug dealers who allegedly......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

Christmas trees! That's what 700 marijuana plants look like when they were being hauled out by the DEA. WNBC has photographs and video of a pot bust in Washington Heights, and the plants just seem endless, like kudzu. It's the stuff Harold's dreams are made of. WNBC reported, "It took investigators several hours to remove all of the drug-related material from the location." Also, it was "unusual" for so many pot plants to be......

Would this be marketed as "Smackers"? Yesterday, customs agents and the DEA arrested men for smuggling $5 million worth of heroin in candy bars. more than 12 pounds of heroin had been divided into pellets that were placed in 100+ candy bars - and the candy bars were individually wrapped and packaged. So, each bar was worth more like 50 Grand. The AP reports the candy-ful luggage was found during a routine baggage inspection of......

It won't be a White Christmas for some people. Yesterday, the Drug Enforcement Agency, along with the NYPD and NY State Police announced a tractor trailer carrying 1,045 pounds of cocaine bound for the Big Apple was seized in NJ. It was the biggest cocaine bust this year, with a street value of $42 million, and the truck was sitting next to a warehouse in Hackensack. From the DEA's press release: The narcotics were......

Did you realize that yesterday's methampetamine lab busts in the city and Suffolk County happened on National Meth Awareness Day? The things you learn! The Drug Enforcement Agency named the bust "Operation Red Fusion" and targeted the nine meth labs because they used the same online company to buy materials like red phosphorous. The DEA's Administrator Karen P. Tandy said, "The danger of meth labs has spread from Mid-America to Midtown. Meth labs are......

Yesterday, the authorities announced breaking up a huge drug and money laundering ring that spanned Colombia, New York, New Jersey and Florida. The feds and NYPD seized millions of dollars and over a thousand pounds of heroin, cocaine and marijuana here in the city. And the drug ring also used used auto parts as a way to launder money. From the DEA:One of the money-laundering methods detailed in the charging documents unsealed today involved the......

The Drug Enforcement Administration announced a $10 million drug ring bust that involved the African plant, khat. Khat has a "very short shelf life" and requires very speedy drug trafficking - one of the ways it was smuggled was through the United Nations mailroom, via diplomatic pouches! (Luggage and boxes were also used to distribute the khat from JFK Airport to Manhattan and the Bronx, and then to other cities.) A story like this can......

A $25 million heroin ring that spanned Colombia, Miami, the Bronx, and Jackson Heights, Queens, was busted by the DEA, which hauled 257 pounds of heroin in NYC alone. Fifty six people have been arrested after the two-year investigation, with 30 arrests yesterday. The DEA credited cooperation from Colombian and local authorities for the big bust, which was prompted by a hotline tip. Heroin was shipped into the U.S. by hiding it in furniture, golf......

It was a horrible day for coke fiends as police broke up two unrelated cocaine rings. In one sting, bricks of cocaine were smuggled from Mexico using tombstones with the Virgin Mary on them. The DEA arrested 12 people in connection with the ring, including one in Houston and three in Brooklyn. A DEA agent told the media, "Like grave robbers who have no respect for the dead, this drug organization used revered tombstones to......

We mentioned the drug mule puppies yesterday, but there are now photographs and more details. The DEA did manage to save a few of the puppies, and even one agent said, "Throughout my 25-year career, this is one of the most outrageous methods of smuggling that I personally have encountered." The drug smugglers claimed they were show dogs! Now that would be an interesting mock-documentary. Authorities believe that the veterinarian is a fugitive in......

This might be the sickest scheme we've heard to smuggle drugs into the country: Stitching bags of liquid heroin into the purebred Labrador retriever puppies. Nooo!!!! The DEA says Colombian drug dealers had a farm of puppies that they'd use to ferry smack to New York City - and three of the puppies died from infections after the dealers removed the packets. The DEA's NY office disclosed this heinous system, as well as noting other......

The U.S. government arraigned Baz Mohammed, the alleged drug kingpin from Afghanistan whose idea of a jihad on America was to put heroin on the streets. The DEA's Karen Tandy said that Mohammed, who was extradited here last week, "now faces what all drug kingpins fear the most — justice in a court in the United States, delivered by an American jury on the very streets of New York that he'd sought to poison." Yes!......

The NYPD, plus the state police and the city's narcotics prosecution office, will get some of the money from Cali drug cartel leader Joe Santacruz Londono's bank accounts. Londono had put the hit on Manuel de Dios Unanue, the NYC journalist who was investigating the Cali cartel's influence in Queens; the Cali cartel had controlled the majority of the cocaine trade in NYC and the Northeast. New York City and State's cut will be $3.3......

One of the first thing that came to Gothamist's mind when we first heard about the subway bag searches was "what does this mean for all those subway hopping drug dealers?" Apparently we weren't the only ones wondering, as New York Magazine's Intelligencer tackles the question this week (in short: the searches suck for them and some, especially coke runners, are adding a 'cab tax' in response). Speaking of cocaine, the white stuff just......

The DEA announced that AP > National > DEA: N.J. Heroin Is Purest in U.S." href="http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-New-Jersey-Heroin.html?ex=1103889347&ei=1&en=0ae66130f0c8f852">New Jersey has the purest heroin in the country. Because NJ tends to be the first stop in the US for drug traffickers, the heroin is usually not cut, therefore making NJ's heroin purity over 71%, which is twice the national average; heroin in NY is 61.5% pure. This means that there are more overdoses and drug choices. Gothamist does......

Gothamist always likes wacky crime blotter stories about drugs, and this case of a man's arrest over pot and mushrooms has it all: Someone in the Netherlands mailed some 'shrooms, aka "psychdelic fungi" in the Post article, to 56 year-old Brooklyn resident and ex-cop, Mark McCurdy. Since Customs agents found the mushrooms before the package was delivered, Customs decided to have the NYPD deliver the package to McCurdy and bust him. And when they got......