Back to INTELLIGENCE CONNECTION IndexBy Jim Doyle\Chronicle Staff Writer
The five suspects in the Bay Area heroin trafficking ring that was smashed last week may have been `free-lancers', or even novices, who did not work for an established crime gang, authorities said yesterday.
The five people arrested in the record-setting "China white" heroin case, federal investigators said, had not been previously identified by law enforcement authorities as being suspected drug traffickers or members of a crime gang based in this country or in Asia.
No criminal records have been found on the five, suggesting that they may have been fledgling operators in the heroin trade, authorities said.
"They were not on anyone's computers. They were not know to be established traffickers in heroin," Customs Commissioner Carol Hallett said in a telephone interview from Washington. "The really hard part begins now, the follow-up, to determine the extent of the network."
Federal agents seized 1,285 pounds of heroin with an estimated street value of $3 billion in the case that is now considered the biggest of its kind in the United States, The drugs were shipped from Southeast Asia to the Port of Oakland last month, leading to the arrests last week of Jim Jui-Chang Chen, 39, his wife, Lucy Hsuehju Yang Chen, 36, and Kelly Pao-Kuei Chen, 37, all of Blackhawk, and Lu Chin Sheng,36, a resident of the Republic of China on Taiwan.
Investigators now suspect that the alleged drug ring may have routed several additional shipments of heroin though the Port of Oakland during the past year.
Federal agents pouring over shipping manifests previously filed with the Customs Service have found evidence that the suspects received four large commercial shipments since last July, when they began renting the warehouse space in Hayward, said Rollin Klink, special agent in charge of enforcement for the customs service in San Francisco.
The four shipments involve similarly packaged and labeled loads from Taiwan to the Port of Oakland. The prior shipments were labeled as produce bags and porcelain, he said.
Customs Service and Drug Enforcement Administration agents here and overseas, as well as foreign law enforcement agents, continued to investigate those leads yesterday.
Meanwhile, a fifth suspect arrested by authorities in Boston appeared before a federal magistrate.
Mike Chui-Ming Chen, 41, of Blackhawk, appeared yesterday before U.S. Magistrate Marian Bowler in a federal courtroom in Boston. Mike Chen is the brother and business partner of Jim Chen. The magistrate read the drug trafficking charges against Mike Chen before postponing a decision on bail until later this week. No plea was entered.
Mike Chen has lived in the U.S. since the 1980s, authorities said. He bought a motel in Tracy in 1981 for $283,500 without a lender, according to property records. He bought his home in the exclusive development of Blackhawk in Contra Costa County last June for $570,000, with $400,000 of that in cash, records show.
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