After Villavencio's shooting, Corrales attempted to continue doing business. He ultimately gave up, arranged for Blandon to deal directly with Ross, and left the country.
Police records confirm that Villavencio was shot in October It appears, therefore, that Blandon did not began selling directly to Ross until after October Because Corrales attempted to continue conducting business before introducing Ross directly to Blandon, Ross and Blandon probably did not begin dealing with each other until The scale of Ross' operation vastly increased once he starting dealing directly with Blandon, particularly after Blandon developed a Colombian source of supply, Aparicio Moreno.
Blandon has not been able to say precisely when he began to deal with Moreno but, based on the accounts of Blandon, Carlos Rocha -- one of Blandon's associates whom the OIG interviewed -- and LA CI-1, it appears that Blandon did not develop his Colombian source until approximately Establishing with any certainty how much cocaine Blandon sold to Ross is virtually impossible.
No one in Blandon's or Ross' organizations kept a careful accounting of such matters. Moreover, the quantity that Blandon sold to Ross was not constant. The amounts were relatively small at the beginning of their relationship, growing considerably as time passed. To further complicate matters, the amounts Blandon sold to Ross fluctuated according to his supply and competition with Ross' various other suppliers.
Some estimates have failed to take these factors into account and have instead assumed that the quantity Ross was buying at his peak in remained constant over the duration of his relationship with Blandon.
From our interviews of both Ross and Blandon, we know that this was not the case. When interviewed by the OIG, Ross recalled that the first kilogram he ever bought was purchased from Blandon. Before that he was dealing in smaller quantities. As discussed above, the OIG believes that Ross began buying cocaine from Blandon in late or early According to Blandon, Ross bought two or three kilograms every few days, until Blandon, wearying of these repeated transactions, started selling Ross about 25 kilograms at a time.
Blandon noted that this reduced his profit per kilogram because of volume discounts, but increased his overall profit because he was selling more cocaine. Blandon testified at Ross' trial that he was selling kilos per month to Ross in Blandon also testified that by he was selling kilos per week to a combination of four or five different customers, including Ross.
Blandon told the OIG that during and , the amounts he sold Ross ranged from 50 kilos in a week, to nothing. It is possible that Ross did not begin buying in large multi-kilo quantities until mid or late When Ross was asked during his December testimony in the "Big Spender" trial to estimate how much his drug organization sold over its lifetime -- which the OIG believes began in or and ended with his arrest in -- he said the total amount was between 2, kilos and 3, kilos.
Such an estimate is consistent with Blandon's account above and with an estimate Blandon made in July during a conversation with an individual who, unbeknownst to Blandon, was a DEA informant wearing a hidden recording device. Blandon told the informant that he estimated that he had sold between 2, and 4, kilos to black drug dealers. Ross noted that he had never received cocaine on credit from either the Torres brothers or Blandon, but was occasionally given partial credit when he did not have enough cash to pay for a delivery.
Blandon denied to the OIG ever making a multi-million dollar shipment to Ross. Instead, he maintained that he delivered approximately 50 to 60 kilos of cocaine to Ross with Lister. He denied that Ross paid him millions of dollars for this transaction. Some of Ross' estimates of his cocaine sales have far exceeded the to kilo estimate he made in Ross told the OIG that, in and , he frequently got about kilograms a week from Blandon and about 40 kilograms a week from Edgar and Jacinto Torres, two of Blandon's competitors who sold to Ross until If this pattern of purchases occurred consistently for only a single year, this would amount to close to kilograms.
Ross also estimated that Blandon sold him between and kilograms every month. According to his testimony, Ross first became a millionaire in or It seems unlikely that his profits increased two-hundredfold in a single year. It is unlikely that we will ever know exactly how much cocaine Blandon sold to Ross. Needless to say, regardless of whether Ross' or Blandon's figures are credited, Blandon sold a massive volume of cocaine to Ross over the duration of their association.
The OIG believes that Ross' own estimate of how much cocaine he sold -- 2, to 3, kilos -- is credible and supported by both his other testimony and by Blandon. While this amount is considerable, it alone was clearly not enough to spark the cocaine epidemic of the s, especially since it was spread over seven years. To put that amount in perspective: 2, to 3, kilograms equals roughly two to three tons of cocaine handled by Ross' organization over seven years.
The DEA estimated in that 44 tons of cocaine had been brought into the country in alone, and 40 to 48 tons in About 20 percent of that cocaine was believed to be destined for Los Angeles. In November , the State Department Bulletin reported that an estimated 70 tons of cocaine was being smuggled into the country. Furthermore, there were a number of traffickers who dealt in quantities far greater than did Ross' organization during this period.
In March , two tons of cocaine were seized at the Miami Airport. In May , the Associated Press reported the arrest of members of a ring in southern California and Miami that smuggled a ton of cocaine in just the prior year.
In September , Alan Mobley pleaded guilty to smuggling two tons of cocaine a year to the West Coast for a cocaine ring run out of Orange County, California. In , Harold Rosenthal was convicted in federal court of bringing five tons of cocaine into the country during a month period.
Cocaine was a status drug for the wealthy in the late s and early s. It was not widely used in South Central Los Angeles in , principally because it was not affordable to many drug users. Phencyclidine PCP was still prevalent in that era. Nonetheless, the Mercury News ' assertion that cocaine was not available in South Central Los Angeles before Blandon began selling to Ross is inaccurate, or at least hyperbolic.
First, cocaine was apparently present in South Central Los Angeles before Ross even began to sell it. In October , the Los Angeles Times published a story recounting Thomas "Tootie" Reese's claim that he was introduced to freebasing in He soon learned how to make crack and became a substantial drug dealer in the black community in Los Angeles.
And Reese was not the only South Central dealer selling cocaine. When the OIG interviewed Ross, we asked whether others were dealing cocaine in the early days of his organization.
Ross stated that there were "a few people I used to hear about," and he named several. As Ross' operation grew, he had other South Central dealers to contend with.
Perhaps the most successful of these was Brian Bennett, also known as "Waterhead Bo. As discussed below, Bennett is believed to be responsible for a large, multi-state cocaine operation in the mids. Law enforcement wiretaps that intercepted communications related to Bennett's operation indicate that, in one month in , Bennett purchased just under 1, kilos of cocaine from a Colombian source.
Ross was also not the first crack dealer in South Central Los Angeles. Others taught him about crack cocaine. Ross told the OIG that he first learned to "rock up" cocaine powder so that it was suitable for smoking from Stefan Moore, and told LASD investigators that he learned from "watching different people in the neighborhood," including Michael McLaurin and a "pimp named Martin. It is also worthy of note that Ross has never claimed that Blandon, or any other Nicaraguan, taught him how to make crack cocaine.
Ross has specifically denied in both his interview with the OIG and in trial testimony that Blandon taught him how to cook crack. The Mercury News ' contention that Blandon was a prime factor in the growth of cocaine in South Central Los Angeles appears to be based in part on the low per-kilo prices that Blandon was able to provide to Ross, which enabled Ross to buy cocaine in large quantities.
However, cocaine prices dropped throughout the s as a result of activity by South American drug cartels. During the s, cocaine producers in South America -- particularly Colombia -- increased production of cocaine.
Cocaine is a commodity whose prices follow the same basic economic rules of supply and demand that apply to most products: when supply is abundant, prices fall; when there is scarcity, prices rise.
When huge seizures have no effect on street prices, it indicates that a large supply is still in circulation. The drop in the price of cocaine, despite increased seizures and purer product, suggests that the amount of cocaine in the United States grew steadily throughout the s. The wholesale market became flooded with cocaine and the price of cocaine dropped dramatically as a result of a glut. In sum, anyone with a Colombian source could have taken advantage of the glut on the supply side.
In , the DEA began investigating Mario Ernesto Villabona Alvarez, a Colombian drug source, and soon discovered that Brian Bennett, who became one of the largest traffickers in Los Angeles, was one of his customers. During an intercepted telephone conversation in April between Villabona and an individual in Cali, Colombia, Villabona was given an accounting of money owed by Bennett for and cocaine deliveries.
At the time of his arrest, the Bennett-Villabona drug organization was selling approximately a ton of cocaine per week, according to law enforcement sources quoted in news coverage about the arrest. McCarver alone was buying thousands of kilos of cocaine.
Nevertheless, it is apparent that other South Central drug dealers forged ties to Colombian dealers without the assistance of Blandon or any other Nicaraguans associated with the Contras. Rehab counselors say one of the reasons for cocaine's omnipotence in the face of legal intervention is that it's a drug that transcends social and ethnic boundaries.
Users may come from diverse backgrounds but all will tell you one thing: They do it for the buzz, which is all too easy to get when it's so inexpensive. Fried said that people began with cocaine just on weekends, but that they gradually began using midweek and then during the daytime.
Cocaine, despite at one time being considered a drug attainable by only society's elite, has never forgotten its humble beginnings. We have and year-olds hooked, so it's certainly not just kids," McDowell said. Nearly four decades since Nixon's declaration of war, government agencies still have their hands full controlling both cocaine's supply and demand.
With about 90 percent of the cocaine sold by U. In the s, President Clinton launched a program called Plan Colombia that promised to halve Colombia's cocaine production. The idea was to cut cocaine off at the source and watch North American cocaine use decline.
Despite that massive expense and effort, some experts say the program has been a complete failure. The government says it's because they are looking in more places, but that means the bottom line is we don't know how much cocaine is out there. Rafael Lemaitre, deputy press secretary for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, admits that more needs to be done. However, it is the alarming lack of progress since the s crack boom that is the cause of concern.
Data from Monitoring the Future, as recommended by Lemaitre, shows the percentage of high school seniors who have tried cocaine rose from 8 percent in to 8. While the percentage of eighth- and 10th-graders dropped slightly over the same period, all three age groups exhibited showed an increase in cocaine experimentation from the figures.
DEA statistics may reveal that 's seizure of , kilograms of cocaine was a record high, but the flip side of the coin suggests that cocaine productionmust be in great health to survive such a hit and still come out on top. Add to Order. Bypass The Line! Start Your Order. Close Privacy Overview This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website.
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