The Secret History of the Israeli Ecstasy Mafia
CrashOut traces a tale of MDMA smugglers from Tel Aviv to Amsterdam to Brooklyn
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As well as focusing on cartels and crime here in Mexico and across Latin America, CrashOut explores mafias, villains and smugglers round the globe, especially with the help of our roving gangland reporter Niko Vorobyov. Today’s installment gets into the lesser known history of the Israeli ecstasy mafia. Here are links to other specials in the series:
The True Story of “The French Connection”
Speaking To Russia’s Cyber Narcos
Inside Asia’s Golden Triangle Today
On April 19th, 1999, a pair of young Jewish American newlyweds were pulled aside by grumpy French customs inspectors at Roissy Airport in Paris. They’d just spent their honeymoon in the City of Lights, and before checking out of their hotel on Rue Sainte-Anne, they’d been handed a suitcase bearing a Hebrew symbol. They’d been told they were smuggling diamonds – morally murky but not entirely unprecedented; some Jewish Americans even grew up hearing of relatives hiding gems and jewellery in the seams of their coats while escaping Nazi-occupied Europe.
But when customs officers opened their luggage, they found 81,550 ecstasy pills stamped with the letter S, for Superman. The couple had been unwitting drug mules for an Israeli organized crime syndicate – at the time, the most prolific importers of ecstasy (MDMA) into the United States, according to the DOJ.
It’s a strange story of suspicious art students, Hasidic smugglers recruited in New York, the global rave scene, the Dutch drug hub, Tel Aviv bombings. and of course, disco biscuits. CrashOut pieces together this sordid piece of drug war history from the turn of the millennium with interviews with some of those who witnessed it.
Trailer Parks
The trail begins in Amsterdam. Well, if we want to be accurate, the trail begins in the southern Dutch countryside, near the Belgian border, in trailer parks populated by…
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