Drug Crimes

The Feds Say a Dallas Clothing Store Was Actually a Front for Jet-setting Drug Dealer

There was just something that didn't add up about Debonaire Bros, the retail menswear business Kristian Fitz had registered with the Texas Secretary of State. For one, there didn't seem to be any clothes. Federal agents staked out the store's supposed address, a Red Bird home belonging to Fitz's par ... More >>

Expert: Aryan Brotherhood of Texas are "Dumb Ol' White Boys" Who Wouldn't Kill a D.A.

When I spoke to Terry Pelz late yesterday afternoon, he sounded hoarse and exhausted. "I'm just about talked out," he said. Pelz is a former prison warden at the Darrington Unit who now runs a criminal justice consulting firm in Missouri City, about 20 miles southwest of Houston. He's been in high ... More >>

Mexican Drug Cartels Are Now Smuggling Drugs Across the Texas Border in Toxic Waste

The Mexican cartels, never ones to rest on their ingenuity, are always coming up with new and inventive ways to smuggle large quantities of drugs into the United States. Take the drug cannon, modeled on the T-shirt launching devices used at NBA games, or the brilliant drive-a-Jeep-over-a-border-fenc ... More >>

Habitat for Humanity Now Owns Four Drug Houses Once Run by the West Side Gator Boyz

Tyrone and Patrick Weatherall had a number of bad habits. Besides the obvious one, their fondness for selling crack, the brothers had lavish, attention-getting taste, which is probably ill-advised when you're in the drug-selling business. According to street lore, when the Weatheralls first united s ... More >>

A Man Was Caught Trying to Smuggle 75 Pounds of Weed Through DFW Airport

Adrelos Sanchez Waters drew suspicion as soon as the woman at the baggage check-in counter in McAllen, Texas, all of seven miles from the Mexican border, checked in his two pieces of luggage. They were heavy, much too heavy to just contain clothes and toiletries. She contacted McAllen police, who i ... More >>

Two Texas Lawmakers Have Filed Bills to Decriminalize Marijuana

If you don't know anything about Elliott Naishtat, you can go here, where you'll learn that he likes to color with crayons, wears the same shirt every July 4, is pretty sure he'd make a fantastic president and loves buffets. He's also a Democratic state representative from Austin who, though it's n ... More >>

Sylvespa "Paw" Adams: Once Accused of Beating a Kid Over Drug Money, Now Popped for Running a Large Dallas Weed Operation

Agents of nearly a dozen federal and local law enforcement agencies busted a large drug ring this week, arresting a dozen people and seizing 600 marijuana plants and 25 pounds of hydroponic weed. The sweep -- conducted by Dallas PD, the Dallas County Sheriff's Office, Homeland Security and the IRS, ... More >>

The DEA Seized 269 Pounds of Leafy Greens En Route to a Dallas Produce House Last Week

Last Thursday, an agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency received a tip from someone in Brownsville, Texas: A Dallas-bound freight shipment described on shipping manifests as a collection of scales and metal plates actually seemed to contain something else entirely. The shipment was picked up that ... More >>

How Dallas Attorney Patrick Robert Simon Launders Money For Drug Traffickers, And How He Got Caught Doing It

In the fall of 2009, attorney Patrick Robert Simon was approached by a man who needed some financial planning advice. The man was making a healthy living, by trafficking illegal drugs, but was prepping for an extended stay in prison, for trafficking illegal drugs. Call it an occupational hazard. Th ... More >>

Your Little Friend Is Back

The Feds Unraveled a Large Dallas Drug Ring After Being Invited Into a Weed-Filled House

It was a sweltering afternoon in early July when several DEA agents and police officers showed up at the house at 1215 Lebanon Avenue, a tiny, burnt-orange home fronting some railroad tracks in Oak Cliff. They weren't sure what to expect. It was just a friendly knock-and-talk, meaning they had no wa ... More >>

Medical Panel Suspends Carrollton Physician Assistant With History of Cocaine-Induced Psychosis

Mark Henry Kett's troubles with the Texas Medical Board began on Feb. 23, 2008, when Carrollton police received a disturbance call at his home. They found Kett armed with a semi-automatic pistol and ranting about assassins who had come to his house to kill his wife. He had fired off a single shot at ... More >>

Feds Say Ex-Lover's Boyfriend Called in Bomb Threat That Grounded DFW-Bound Flight

Christopher Shell had a pretty terrible day yesterday. First, his Dallas-bound plane was turned around in midair after someone phoned in a bomb threat. When the plane landed in Philadelphia, he was taken into federal custody because the caller had said he was the one carrying liquid explosives. When ... More >>

Dwaine Caraway on Dixon Circle Killing: Fix the Big Picture or See It Get Worse

We're all holed up behind our verbal barricades on this Dixon Circle deal, me among the worst of them, surprise surprise. So maybe it's worth remembering that Dallas city councilman Dwaine Caraway was out there Tuesday night. He was urging calm among the hundreds of people angry about the fatal shoo ... More >>

Sam Hurd's Cousin, Who May Have Inadvertently Tipped Feds to Former Cowboy's Drug Dealing, Arrested in San Antonio

The federal government has already accused Sam Hurd, a Dallas Cowboys receiver until a year ago, of being caught with a kilo of cocaine while trying to buy a lot more in an attempt drug-dealing network. Because a man's got to live, right? How can a guy feed his family on a $5.15 million, three-year ... More >>

Former Cowboy Kurt Vollers Is Going to Prison For More Than Two Years For Selling Pot

​It's been close to two years since former Dallas Cowboy Kurt Vollers pleaded guilty to his role in a pot-distribution "conspiracy" run from 2006 till '08 out of an apartment on N. MacArthur Boulevard, and more than a year since John Newton, the leader of the so-called Newton Drug Trafficking Orga ... More >>

The Long Arm Sees All: Ten Musicians Arrested in Texas

When Snoop Dogg was issued a citation for marijuana possession at a border checkpoint outside El Paso last week, the world reacted with shock and disbelief. We had no idea this beacon of sobriety -- the same guy who penned "Smoke Weed Everyday" - could act so out of character. Of course, Texas is f ... More >>

Innocuous Pepper Turned Capsicum Criminal: Jalapeños Busted at the Border

A truckload of jalapeño peppers was seized in Pharr, Texas, this Thursday, according to a Customs and Border Patrol news release. The alleged marijuana from this seizure has an estimated street value of approximately $3,162,530. CBP officers seized the narcotics and the tractor-trailer. The peppe ... More >>

Feds Announce (Another) Local Meth Bust Involving Members of La Familia Drug Cartel

​In October of 2009, James Capra, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Dallas Division, invited media to a press conference so he could show off the massive haul from a long-in-the-works bust involving the Mexican drug cartel known as La Familia: 220 pounds of methamphetamine, 4.5 kil ... More >>

Dallas Federal Grand Jury Indicts Sam Hurd, Co-Conspirator For Cocaine Distribution

​Seems like only three weeks ago Sam Hurd was just another former wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys who was on his road to journeyman status, which, in his case, ran through Soldier Field. Then it was revealed: Even before his acquisition by the Chicago Bears, the San Antonio native fancied him ... More >>

Cartels and conquistadors -- who are worse?

According to Feds' Complaint, Sam Hurd's Drug Bust in Chicago Started With Deal in Dallas

​No doubt you've heard by now that former Dallas Cowboy Sam Hurd's in federal custody, having been popped by authorities in Chicago last night for trying to buy "five to 10 kilograms of cocaine, at $25,000 per kilogram, and 1,000 pounds of marijuana, at $450 per pound, per week for distribution in ... More >>

Postcard from Texas Meth Country

In one East Texas town, a new brand of meth lab has business -- and the occasional house -- booming.

Thirteen Locals, Who Feds Say Are Linked to Los Zetas Cartel, Indicted For Coke Trafficking

​Stories linking Los Zetas -- a drug cartel consisting of, among others, former Mexican Army commandos -- with North Texas have been around for years. Take this story, from three years ago, connecting a Collin County deputy constable with a cousin said to be working for the cartel. In March, The N ... More >>

The War on Film

Drug Trafficking, the Missing Piece in The Dallas Morning News's Texas Jobs Puzzle

Piles of cash and nowhere to launder it? That's what Texas is for, hombre.​In Sunday's Dallas Morning News, reporter Brendan Case took a stab at explaining what, besides the state's generally business-friendly policies, has helped Texas produce such a relative bounty of jobs of late. The state ... More >>

FedEx is the Way to Go and Other Shipping Lessons From the Big North Texas Drug Bust

Don't trust him. He might be a drug mule.​Late yesterday, our local feds got to brag up a good half-decade's worth of sleuthing when they announced charges against more than a dozen people in connection with a multi-state cocaine- and heroin-trafficking syndicate based in Forth Worth. The acc ... More >>

Following Arrests, Feds Outline Vast Cocaine, Heroin Ring Operating Out of Dallas, Fort Worth

​The U.S. Attorney's Office sends word: Federal authorities have rounded up dozens suspected of trafficking heroin and cocaine from Dallas to Atlanta to Baltimore to Philadelphia to Nashville and all points in between. Those arrested yesterday come from all over, including Dallas and Fort Worth an ... More >>

Prosecutors Accused Hilliard Fields of Rape With Zero Evidence. Now, His Name is Cleared.

Hilliard Fields stands outside the courtroom with his lawyer, Gary Udashen.​In the end, it only took minutes for Judge Larry Mitchell to clear Hilliard Fields of the sexual assault charges that have followed him for the last 14 years."Sir, I'm very sorry for the misery this has caused you in your ... More >>

Meet A Real Ace

iWatch You Growing Pot In An Empty House

​Back in October, the Dallas Police Department launched iWatch Dallas, its spin on LAPD's "virtual crime watch" intended to use citizen alerts to deter anything and everything from car burglaries to prostitution to terrorism. DPD says it's working as planned and that iWatch has "led to several imp ... More >>

A Tourists Guide to a Dozen Dirty Deeds by Dallas Cowboys

Head of Pot Distribution "Conspiracy" That Included Ex-Cowboy Gets 24 Years in Prison

University of Notre DameBob Davie, then coach at Notre Dame, with a freshman Kurt Vollers back in '97 ​In April 2009, John Patrick Newton was arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents for growing, storing and selling marijuana out of an apartment on N. MacArthur Boulevard inIrving. Said t ... More >>

Once, He Ran West Dallas Drug Houses. For the Next 30 Years, He'll Be in State, Federal Prison.

Click to embiggen to see where some of the West Dallas Gator Boys' drug houses were​Back in August Sam told you all about Tyrone Weatherall, a leader of the West Side Gator Boys -- and an exotic animal collector -- who pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to possess with the intent to distrib ... More >>

Pinalcchio: Renowned Forensics Experts Say a Pinal County Deputy's High-Profile Tale About Getting Shot After Encountering Drug Smugglers Doesn't Add Up

Unlike refugees from other troubled countries, only a fraction of Mexicans seeking U.S. asylum are accepted- no matter how horrible their wounds or their stories.

Access Denied

Dallas Gang Leader, Drug Dealer and Apparent Exotic Animal Lover Pleads Guilty to Conspiracy

We're thinking the kiddos at Pinkston High School weren't having a tough time getting high last year. (The markers are streets where drug houses were located.)​Tyrone Weatherall, the 35-year-old leader of the "West Side Gator Boys," pleaded guilty today to one count of conspiracy to possess wi ... More >>

Illegal Immigrants, Desperate To Find Work In The U.S., Risk Kidnapping, Rape and Murder From Those Smuggling Them Across the Border

Five Plead Guilty to Running "Elaborate," Expensive Pot-Growing Op in Northwest Dallas

​This just in from the U.S. Attorney General's Office: From the summer of '05 till December '08, five locals were running out of three Northwest Dallas houses an "elaborate marijuana growing operation" that was eventually busted up by the Drug Enforcement Agency. They had three houses -- one each ... More >>

The Killer of His Daughter's Mother: A Cunning American Boy Becomes a Mexican Cartel Soldier and East L.A. Executioner

Cowboy Down: Murdered Southern Arizona Rancher Rob Krentz's Family Talk About His Life and Death

For Those Living in Ground Zero for Drug Trafficking Along the U.S.-Mexico Border, the Illegal Immigration Crisis is Personal

Badlands

Six Months After La Familia Bust, Dallas Boss Pleads Guilty to Meth Trafficking

Kimberly ThorpeSome of the drugs and money seized by law-enforcement officials in the fall of 2009​We were there in October of last year, when the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, the I.R.S., the U.S. Secret Service and Texas Air National Guard -- and every other law-enforcing acronym -- ... More >>

Agnostic Front

Friday, January 22, at Trees

When the DEA Busted Up La Familia, They Hauled In Plenty of Guns, Drugs and Dough

Photos by Kimberly Thorpe​You're looking at 220 pounds of methamphetamine, 4.5 kilos of cocaine and $660,000 in cash; there was also quite the assortment of machine guns hauled in. The whole stash was seized in North Texas yesterday from more than 80 members of a violent Mexican drug cartel known ... More >>

Smokey dare: Maybe it's time to regulate marijuana like cigarettes

Pot-bellied Cowboy

Finally catching up with the late, great Nate

Hash Over

Fish stink; Dragonfly dunk

Hash Over

A mighty roar

Los Tigres del Norte have become legends by singing the immigrant's song