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Ogla



Registered: 02/16/04
Posts: 11,314
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Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles
#21681399 - 05/15/15 12:27 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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May 15, 2015

Honolulu, Hawaii- A German citizen who lives in Hawaii was sentenced Thursday to three years of probation for smuggling oil that's commonly used to make ecstasy.
Wolfgang Hans Langlois put safrole oil in wine bottles hidden in household items he shipped from Germany to Kauai last year, according to documents filed in federal court in Honolulu. Customs agents intercepted the shipment and found the oil, which is legal but requires special permission to import.
Langlois pleaded guilty to smuggling but maintains the oil was not for ecstasy but for a legal substance he wanted to make for his wife, who has cancer.
He also got 720 hours of community service as part of his sentence.
The shipment caught the attention of agents because Langlois' name was on a watch list for people suspected of smuggling ecstasy to Hawaii from South America in vitamin and face cream jars in 2008, according to the court papers. Langlois was never charged in that case.
In August 2014, when agents in Los Angeles intercepted the shipment from Germany, they discovered 10 wine bottles containing an "unknown yellow liquid stored inside of a wooden nightstand in a suspicious manner," according to an affidavit by a Homeland Security Investigations special agent.
Tests revealed the liquid was safrole oil, used to manufacture MDMA, also known ecstasy or molly.
Defense attorney William Harrison said Thursday his client is a chemist and was not trying to make ecstasy.
Instead, Langlois wanted to use the oil to experiment with creating a legal, non-psychedelic, naturopathic medication to help his wife cope with breast cancer, Harrison said.
"They're both very into organic practices ... they grow their own food," Harrison said. They built their house with scrap wood, he said.
The oil was removed from the shipment and replaced with fake oil. Agents obtained a warrant to use a tracking device and then allowed the shipment to continue to Lihue, Kauai, the affidavit said.
On Sept. 19, Langlois arrived at a pier to pick up the shipment, and agents followed him as he drove home.
"Agents conducting surveillance noticed that the defendant was taking actions that appeared to be counter-surveillance techniques, such as stopping on the side of the main road without any apparent reason and by making turns while increasing and decreasing his speed," the affidavit said. "Eventually, the defendant proceeded to his residence."
During a search of Langlois' property, agents found what appeared to be a chemical laboratory, the affidavit said.
The 7,500 milliliters of oil found could have produced 10,000 to 70,000 ecstasy pills, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Tony Roberts. He estimates the Hawaii street value of one pill to be $10 to $15.
Harrison said Langlois had a chemist's lab and "not a clandestine type of drug lab."
In an attempt to convince the judge to sentence Langlois to some jail time, Roberts put a Drug Enforcement Administration special agent on the witness stand to discuss what was found during the search.
There were various chemicals, flasks used in meth labs and a cookbook of sorts on making chemical substances — bookmarked at the MDMA pages, said Special Agent Frank Bru.
Harrison said those chemicals could be used to make soaps and perfume.
Langlois pleaded guilty in January. In his plea agreement, he admitted he flew from Hawaii to Germany, where he obtained the oil and intended to import it to the United States without telling customs officials.
He apologized in court, saying he's learned a lesson.
http://www.thestate.com/living/health-fitness/article21051618.html
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Cognitive_Shift
CS actual




Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 29,591
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: Ogla]
#21681743 - 05/15/15 04:38 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Oh yeah I know i'm on a watch list for smuggling MDMA but all of this safrole is for my wife. Did I mention she has cancer?
-------------------- L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs
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Jvells
Unity



Registered: 11/05/09
Posts: 3,031
Loc: East coast
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: Cognitive_Shift]
#21681879 - 05/15/15 06:22 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Lol, at least he tried
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refried

Registered: 06/14/13
Posts: 3,675
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: Jvells]
#21682034 - 05/15/15 07:48 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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that's a bitch. i wonder how small of an offense you'd have to commit to get on a watch list and if you'd be notified of the fact.
that's also a wide range 10,000-70,000 doses. you'd have to be a shitty chemist to make something with that wide of a range.
kind of debunks the theory that you can say your mhrb is used for making dye... something i've heard people claim they'd do.
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Cognitive_Shift
CS actual




Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 29,591
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: refried]
#21682044 - 05/15/15 07:51 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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You have to be aware police officers are making these statements not chemists. They probably just wikipedia the stuff, they don't actually know what they're talking about. They just find wine bottles not filled with wine and confiscate it, send a test to the lab.
-------------------- L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs
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refried

Registered: 06/14/13
Posts: 3,675
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: Cognitive_Shift]
#21682059 - 05/15/15 08:00 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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right, also they can use it to expand exaggerate charges against you. reminds me of once being arrested with two teeners of coke and a small scale and getting hit with like 7 charges. most dropped but the intent charge stuck. was sitting in a parking lot like a dumbass fwiw but still they fucked me with the arrest report and their analysis of the situation.
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fapjack
Title



Registered: 07/26/07
Posts: 16,574
Loc: Central New Jersey
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: Ogla]
#21682067 - 05/15/15 08:05 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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I never realized the yield for MDMA from safrole oil was that shitty.
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Edited by fapjack (05/15/15 08:12 AM)
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Stargate
Addicted To Growing


Registered: 05/26/14
Posts: 1,124
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: refried]
#21682472 - 05/15/15 10:32 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
refried said: that's a bitch. i wonder how small of an offense you'd have to commit to get on a watch list and if you'd be notified of the fact.
Well, I was notified when I was placed on the terrorist watch list.
-------------------- From before I started growing gourmet mushrooms:
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ShroomDoom
Friend of the Medicine



Registered: 06/07/04
Posts: 4,435
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: fapjack]
#21682889 - 05/15/15 12:25 PM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
fapjack said: I never realized the yield for MDMA from safrole oil was that shitty.
Depends on the skill of the chemist. No one is perfect and 7 kilos from 7500 mg safrole would be hard even for a skilled chemist. Shulgins yields were about 90% from isosafrole but that isn't realistic for most average clan chemists.
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Gorlax



Registered: 05/06/08
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: ShroomDoom]
#21682989 - 05/15/15 12:52 PM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Any professional chemist would get the standard yield pretty easily. If the equipment blew then you would have a shitty-er yield. Not like super sayan chemists can only get that yield. 90% is what everyone aims for and if you don't get that yield and the calculations say that should be the yield you made a mistake. Any chemist going this far with professional knowledge would not make that mistake.
It's pretty obvious this guy makes MDMA. he grows his own food, he lives in hawaii. Everyone grows their own food basically. I saw house hunters and everyone had gardens and even some houses were built out of native bamboo. He is lucky he had a good lawyer and wasn't caught in the act. I don't understand why he would hide the wine bottles in a weird way. I'm sure if he disguised them as wine and had them normally shipped they wouldn't of popped them open and tested them. I doubt customs would want to ruin a vintage wine if they thought it was just wine. Hiding it in some weird way is what probably made them suspicious.
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ShroomDoom
Friend of the Medicine



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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: Gorlax]
#21683875 - 05/15/15 05:04 PM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
Gorlax said: Any professional chemist would get the standard yield pretty easily. If the equipment blew then you would have a shitty-er yield. Not like super sayan chemists can only get that yield. 90% is what everyone aims for and if you don't get that yield and the calculations say that should be the yield you made a mistake. Any chemist going this far with professional knowledge would not make that mistake.
Like I said, Clandestine Chemists not professionals might struggle with the 90% yields in the literature. It could also not necessarily be a mistake that lowers yields but the quality of the starting safrole oil and reagents can effect yields as well. for a lot of reaction schemes even 60% or better is worth it. As a chemistry student in university one of the things we learned is often actual yields from a given synthesis may be much lower than yields reported from the literature.
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Shpongle1



Registered: 10/20/09
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: ShroomDoom]
#21684923 - 05/15/15 09:48 PM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Not that it's really relevant but where are you guys getting this 90% yield from iso that Shulgin did? Certainly not from what he wrote in Pihkal... Much less.
-------------------- There are more people imprisoned for the commission of drug offenses in the United States - close to 500,000 - than are incarcerated in England, France, Germany, and Japan for all crimes combined. Examined in another way, the United States has 100,000 more people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses than all the countries of the European Union combined, despite the fact that the European Union has 100 million more citizens.
- "Drugs and Drug Policy: The Control of Consciousness Alteration, 2007.
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Gorlax



Registered: 05/06/08
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: Shpongle1]
#21685091 - 05/15/15 10:43 PM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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I have no idea what the literature says about MDMA yield just grabbed it from the previous post. I was just trying to say that achieving a yield doesn't necessarily mean someones a brilliant scientist. It just means they followed the directions properly.
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fapjack
Title



Registered: 07/26/07
Posts: 16,574
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: ShroomDoom]
#21685979 - 05/16/15 05:57 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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He had a DEA license so he could easily buy whatever chemicals he wanted in an ideal set-up and take however long he wanted to do as many synthesis as he felt like. I'd imagine that really helped his yields. He wasn't doing it for money, he was doing it entirely for shits and giggles.
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Cognitive_Shift
CS actual




Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 29,591
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: fapjack]
#21686448 - 05/16/15 09:52 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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He was doing it cause he was a) a nerd and b) he was nerdily interested in psychedelics..
If anyone want's to see what his lab looked like check the only pics I have that I share under my ratings.
-------------------- L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs
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fapjack
Title



Registered: 07/26/07
Posts: 16,574
Loc: Central New Jersey
Last seen: 3 years, 10 months
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: Cognitive_Shift]
#21686511 - 05/16/15 10:15 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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He liked making drugs, he was fortunate enough to have a job that was also his passion.
Thanks for the pics, very cool. Did you take them yourself?
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Cognitive_Shift
CS actual




Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 29,591
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: fapjack]
#21686577 - 05/16/15 10:32 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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No unfortunately I didn't take them my self a friend did. I just thought they were so cool I had to share them. It's a piece of history to me.
-------------------- L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs
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Shpongle1



Registered: 10/20/09
Posts: 3,163
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: Cognitive_Shift]
#21686897 - 05/16/15 12:21 PM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Yeah the yields he published, from my understanding, are nothing spectacular. He didn't exactly worry about maximizing his yield on a particular compound, more so just found a way to make it, bioassay, publish and move on to the next.
-------------------- There are more people imprisoned for the commission of drug offenses in the United States - close to 500,000 - than are incarcerated in England, France, Germany, and Japan for all crimes combined. Examined in another way, the United States has 100,000 more people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses than all the countries of the European Union combined, despite the fact that the European Union has 100 million more citizens.
- "Drugs and Drug Policy: The Control of Consciousness Alteration, 2007.
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Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist

Registered: 03/10/07
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: Cognitive_Shift]
#21689201 - 05/17/15 02:39 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
Cognitive_Shift said: No unfortunately I didn't take them my self a friend did. I just thought they were so cool I had to share them. It's a piece of history to me.
I took those pics.
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Cognitive_Shift
CS actual




Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 29,591
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Re: Man accused of smuggling safrole into US in wine bottles [Re: Alan Rockefeller] 1
#21689209 - 05/17/15 02:43 AM (8 years, 8 months ago) |
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You're my friend
-------------------- L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontés et désirs
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