Reefer Men: The Rise and Fall of a Billionaire Drug Ring by Tony Thompson

Author:Tony Thompson [Thompson, Tony]
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781444719864
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

There could be no doubt about it – the DEA were onto them. But just how much did they really know about the forthcoming operation and when did they plan to strike?

To get the answers, the Shaffers turned to Stephen Swanson, the former DEA agent who had previously assisted the Dennis Ingham branch of the organisation by providing them with inside information about the investigation into their activities.

William Shaffer flew to Los Angeles and personally delivered $120,000 to Swanson’s office, a down payment for the investigation he would undertake on the organisation’s behalf. In the meantime, the operation was placed on hold. The 42 tons of marijuana would remain on the Stormbird, which in turn would remain in hiding somewhere in the Alaskan fjords.

Within the space of a few days Swanson had delivered his report and fingered Hank Sheppard as the man who had turned informant. The bad news was thatthe DEA knew about the Stormbird and, with the help of the navy and the coastguard, was regularly sending out air and sea patrols to look for it. They also knew that the mother ship, the Manuia, had delivered the marijuana and was already headed back to South East Asia. They were simply waiting for the fishing boats to come into port and then they would strike.

There was good news too. The DEA knew nothing about the fake trucking company which O’Dea had set up to transport the drugs down to California. Wary of their previous dealings, O’Dea had never mentioned anything about this to Hank meaning that, in turn, Hank was unable to pass details on to the authorities. Most importantly, the DEA had no idea its operation had been compromised.

Exact details of the day-to-day surveillance operation were not available but they had to assume that their every move was being monitored and that their phones were being tapped. They wouldn’t be able to catch a cold without the DEA knowing about it. The sensible thing to do would have been to dump the drugs overboard and bring the two boats in clean, putting the loss down to bad luck.

But Chris and Bill didn’t feel like being sensible. The odds were stacked against them and they would be taking on the combined resources of two powerful government agencies along with one arm of the military. Despite that, they had some things in their favour and were aware of the limitations of the information held by those working against them. It might just be possible to pull it off anyway. As was the case with the Duchess of Windsor’s jewels, sometimes you just have to go for it.

The other ace in the hand for the Shaffers was that the DEA had no idea that Hank had been identified as the source of the leak. The brothers knew that whatever they told him, he would faithfully report back to the authorities. With a little careful handling, it would be easy to make sure the authorities were looking in the wrong direction when the drugs came in.

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