So Marx was right.


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Religion, opiate...Virgin Mary tombstones found stuffed with Mexican
drugs

Thu Mar 30, 06:45 PM EST

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. government agents said Thursday they had broken
up a ring of drug smugglers who used tombstones featuring the Virgin
Mary to move hundreds of kilograms of cocaine into the United States
from Mexico.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency announced arrests of 12 people as part
of an alleged conspiracy stretching from New York to Mexico City.

Four of those arrests came Thursday, one in Houston, Texas, and three
after an early morning raid on a warehouse in New York's Brooklyn
borough.

At the warehouse, agents found bricks of cocaine packed inside
tombstones, some decorated with figures of the Virgin Mary, the DEA said.

"Like grave robbers who have no respect for the dead, this drug
organization used revered tombstones to smuggle millions of dollars
worth of cocaine into New York City," said John Gilbride, the special
agent in charge of the New York DEA office.

At the Brooklyn warehouse, agents found eight tombstones, five of which
were packed with 20 to 25 kilograms each of cocaine. They also found
remnants of smashed tombstones.

An earlier seizure at a Long Island, N.Y., stash house netted 84
kilograms of cocaine and nearly $500,000 in drug proceeds, officials
said.

The investigation, dubbed Operation Omni Presence, began in May 2005
based on a tip from Long Island's Nassau County investigators and
eventually drew in law-enforcement personnel in Georgia, Texas, North
Carolina and Florida.

The DEA said the raids dismantled the entire supply chain, from the
source in Mexico to the New York street dealers. A New York grand jury
has indicted the suspects on charges including money-laundering,
possession with intent to distribute, and conspiracy.

Last month, the DEA said it had arrested a separate group of suspected
smugglers who surgically inserted drugs into puppies as part of another
scheme.




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http://tinyurl.com/mb5sz