|
motaman
old hand
Registered: 12/18/02
Posts: 6,047
Last seen: 7 days, 15 hours
|
Stolen pills worth $1 million as speed 1
#1495440 - 04/26/03 08:25 AM (20 years, 11 months ago) |
|
|
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?thesection=news&thesubsection=&storyID=3450878
Stolen pills worth $1 million as speed
24.04.2003 By PATRICK GOWER Thieves have stolen a commercial shipment of the main ingredient used to make the drug speed, worth millions of dollars to the criminal underworld.
A raid on a North Shore warehouse last month netted the thieves 23,500 of highly sought-after pure pseudoephedrine pills, packaged and ready for export.
The pills, which were to be used as medicine for coughs and colds, would probably be sold to makers of methamphetamine, known as speed.
In the hands of the right "cook", police say they could be turned into more than $1 million worth of the popular drug.
The warehouse has been targeted again - unsuccessfully - since the robbery, forcing the company to move to a new location with improved security.
The Herald has agreed not to name the company at the request of police still hunting the thieves.
Sergeant Rod Fraser, who heads the North Shore burglary squad, would not say how the burglars broke in, but their raid was "organised and sophisticated".
"It showed a little bit of inside knowledge of the product and location," he said.
Mr Fraser said that even though the thieves triggered alarms, they had packed up the boxes of pills and fled before security arrived.
The company would not disclose yesterday what the pills were worth to it, saying it was "minuscule' compared to the street value of the drug.
Because the pills contained pure pseudoephedrine, Mr Fraser said they were the "creme-de-la-creme" for drug-makers.
Using a formula provided by Auckland drug squad detectives, the raw pseudoephedrine could be turned into 700-1050g of "pure" speed, known as "P". As a gram sells for anywhere between $600 and $1000 on the streets, the stolen pills could make between $420,000 and $1,000,050 of the drug.
Pharmacists have co-operated with police in a clampdown on the sale of pseudoephedrine because of its increasing use in the making of speed.
The high demand has made pharmacies the targets of ram-raids and 'shoppers', who travel the country buying single packets of pills worth $14 to sell them to drugmakers for $100. After the second break-in attempt, 10 days after the first, Mr Fraser said his squad had helped the targeted company to review their security.
"They now have very strong security measures in place which would be very difficult, if not impossible, to penetrate."
Mr Fraser urged other enterprises holding large amounts of pseudoephedrine to discuss their security with police.
He also called on anyone who had seen the unique packaging used on the stolen pills to contact his squad.
-------------------- http://heffter.org
|
Seuss
Error: divide byzero
Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
Loc: Caribbean
Last seen: 1 month, 19 days
|
Re: Stolen pills worth $1 million as speed [Re: motaman] 1
#1495658 - 04/26/03 11:10 AM (20 years, 11 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
As a gram sells for anywhere between $600 and $1000 on the streets, the stolen pills could make between $420,000 and $1,000,050 of the drug.
Is this really the price of meth these days? Last time I knew the price, it was only around $50 for a half gram, but these was many years ago. Sounds to me like the cops/DA/media are once again starting to inflate the numbers.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
|
Madtowntripper
Sun-Beams out of Cucumbers
Registered: 03/06/03
Posts: 21,287
Loc: The Ocean of Notions
Last seen: 7 months, 21 days
|
Re: Stolen pills worth $1 million as speed [Re: Seuss] 1
#1500302 - 04/28/03 09:25 AM (20 years, 10 months ago) |
|
|
Yeah. That is most definately fucked up. I'm getting 100% guaranteed pure Methamphetamine, for 90 bucks a gram. D.A.'s dont know shit....
-------------------- After one comes, through contact with it's administrators, no longer to cherish greatly the law as a remedy in abuses, then the bottle becomes a sovereign means of direct action. If you cannot throw it at least you can always drink out of it. - Ernest Hemingway If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent. -Cormac MacCarthy He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. - Aeschylus
|
|