How Drug Smuggling (Ecstasy) Actually Works | How Crime Works | Insider

My name is Shaun Attwood. He smuggled more than $10 million worth of

ecstasy

into the United States from Holland. This is how

crime

works

. At the height of the

ecstasy

circle, I had about 200 people working for me. The largest shipment ever was 40,000 pills and we were competing against an underboss of the Gambino

crime

family, "Sammy the Bull" Gravano. When he was active, the capital of ecstasy manufacturing was Holland. Five of the most common back then were white doves, Mitsubishis, Eurodollars, Teletubbies and dollar signs. A pure ecstasy pill should contain between 100 and 125 milligrams of MDMA and clay. So, they put the powder in the press and it comes out with a logo.

The recipe for ecstasy has changed because the government has clamped down on the original ingredients of ecstasy. So, we have these cartels and large criminal enterprises who don't care about the purity of the product and add all kinds of mixtures of chemicals. Sometimes people add food coloring to create a distinctive mark. Most of the tablets containing food coloring were not pure presses, but Holland base presses. Every time a new pill came out, people said, "This is the bomb," "This has double MDMA." But generally, if it's 100 to 125 milligrams of MDMA, you'll get the same dose. At the height of the ecstasy operation, we could have a pill designed a certain way, but we chose not to because we believed it would attract law enforcement.

On the DanceSafe website, they had all the pills, pictures of them, and gave the exact ingredients of the pills. So we already had a very good reputation for the quality of our product. I was there when the rave scene started in Arizona. I knew everyone. It was all the little local cliques that came to me to invest in matches and E deals. The first clubs I scored individually were a little rave called Chupa and the Silver Dollar Club. We bought them for 25 or 30 dollars a pill. This is 1996, 1997. So we made a deal where, I don't remember if it was 500 or 1,000 from Los Angeles for a little over $10 a pill.

That's when we realized that we needed to meet the demand to get larger quantities and get them at reduced prices to pass through Holland. To get pills in Holland, I had to take people on board flights with the test kits and tell them: "Go to the clubs." They would find the people selling them in the clubs and return home with the samples. And if the samples were good, then the person would come back out and we would establish a deeper connection. It's very covert. Everything is done in hotel rooms. People appear. You have your test kit.

They deliver the pills; You deliver the invoices. Not much basic information is known about what is happening, and it is probably to protect the companies running it. Once we started getting pills from Holland, we received tens of thousands per shipment, but then we didn't have to do it as often. It could be every month, every two months, something like that. Wild Man, my best friend since childhood, became my main bodyguard in Arizona. When Wild Man was on his first stay, he opened the door to a world of gangsters, contacts I wouldn't have made. And I got to meet all these characters.

And one of them in particular was in a situation with the police, and we protected him, and he said, "From now on, my brothers and I will have your back." And that was the New Mexico mafia. We were raised by the New Mexico mafia. This is the most powerful and dangerous mafia in Arizona at that time. They tried to assassinate the head of the prisons, the head of the Department of Corrections. They told me, "Shaun, if you are stopped leaving our house, the police do not have the right to get into your vehicle unless they have probable cause.

They will ask you, 'Can I search your vehicle?' You can say, 'No, I'm in a hurry.' And if they insist on searching the vehicle and they find something without probable cause, that's the fruit of the forbidden tree, we'll post your bond right away, a lawyer will come visit you right away, and the lawyer will do it. "I'll tell you, realistically, what kind of trouble you're in." The reason I wasn't running into the cartel and I wasn't running into the New Mexico mafia is that they had harder

drug

s under control. in competition with them. So at first from Holland we did it by mail.

We fluffed up the stock market annual reports and used edible glue to seal them all up and then they would put them in a box and send them by FedEx to an address in Arizona. And we had several addresses. I drove people from the United Kingdom, built up credit in their names, rented houses in their names and bought cars in their names, all to use within the criminal enterprise. We would go from the Hermosillo Airport. We would fly to Mexico City. You could then take Air France to Paris and then take the train to Holland. Back then, this was before 9/11.

This may seem very indifferent to some people, but you could throw them in your luggage, like pillowcases, thousands and thousands of pills. Now, it was more strategic than simply getting off the plane in Hermosillo and then crossing the border into Arizona. We rented properties in Puerto Peñasco, Rocky Point, and the smugglers who brought them to Mexico took them to those places. The pills would then be divided into vehicles and smugglers who had, for example, new SUVs, University of Arizona stickers, scuba tanks and all kinds of tourist trinkets. And especially if it was spring break or one of the student holidays, the checkpoints were very crowded.

They were so overwhelmed. You know, you have so many guys stopping cars. We were never, ever caught taking them to the Arizona border. It was impeccable. "Better Call Saul", these people exist. They may seem like stereotypes, but they are based on what is really happening in America. I mean, there's a lot of money in

drug

s. So, I was number one. He was coordinating the operations. Wild Woman was number 2. She is from Liverpool. Wild Man was number 3. Three Englishmen at the top. The rest were all local people from the United States. Mostly the people originated from Arizona.

We had it structured like a corporation. I divided it into factions. Then you have the head of each faction, they have middlemen and brokers who sell them on the street. In my company, the main rules were loyalty, not snitching, passing information along the chain. If you discover something on the street that is a threat, that information is sent to me immediately. I mainly chose people who had no criminal record. My right hand man, Cody Bates, is now dead, he rented cars and houses just for cash and pills that no one knew about. I live in a million dollar house on the side of a mountain, the most beautiful place I have ever lived in my life, in a gated and guarded community.

As more people work for me, I realized it was best to spread the product across multiple locations, across multiple factions. So as soon as a shipment of tens of thousands arrives, we want to get it out immediately and distribute it to different locations. Because if they give you 2,000 pills, nothing happens. That's the cost of doing business. But if we have 40,000 people in a house and it is affected, it is a serious loss. At the peak, people from other states came to us. People would even fly from Chicago and states on the other side of the United States to come to us.

We had pagers. I never discussed big deals on the phone with anyone. Cody Bates rented the house where the product was, where the cash was that no one knew about, and he made the rounds. Then, he would approach the head of each faction and collect the money. If everything went well, it was fine. If there were problems, that's where we would bring Wild Man and G-Dog, and they would enforce the law. With the shipment being 40,000 pills, let's say I receive at least $10, on average, and pay $2 to $3. I'm making $7 or $8 on 40,000, which I think is a couple hundred grand, profit from a mission.

To launder the money, I flew people out of the UK, opened stock exchanges, bank accounts and credit accounts in their names. I slowly built up all this credit and kept all this money in a legal way, so I hadn't done anything criminal to him yet. But once the company became massive and I knew I had to look at these accounts and these names, I started investing in music stores and rave clothing. Now, if you're a store that hosts raves, then when you host a rave on the weekend, you have tens of thousands in cash in the bank on Monday.

To that you add the product of my ecstasy. We are introducing money into the banking system. Before Sammy the Gravano Bull came on the scene, I was famous for bringing out the white and beige printing presses of Holland. And that was the main source of supply to Arizona, to the raves and to the clubs. What you have to keep in mind is that people say that if Sammy the Bull Gravano was competing with you, it is the Italian mafia, the Gambino crime family. But that's not true. Sammy the Bull is a formidable character in his own right.

He murdered people, he plotted to murder them. But he was the highest-ranking member of the mafia who took sides, testified and cooperated. And he went against Gotti. He did something that was stupid. We found a property that we believe was linked to Sammy the Bull's people. And they tied us all up and kicked in the door and held people down and took all their stuff as an act of, you know, showing that if you do something to us, something will happen to you. But I regretted doing it. I should have never put myself in that situation, because kicking in someone's door and running down the hall with a gun where everyone could have had guns and just shooting us all, the police could have come, that was drug-fueled insanity. , remembering it now.

It made things worse. They hit me. They were offering $10,000 for my head on a silver platter. In prison, Sammy the Bull Gravano's son told me that someone had called him in Phoenix, his name is The Crowbar. I was there with G-Dog, Wild Man and some members of my team, Wild Woman. A woman who was doing a striptease had seen me. There was a reward for me. She called and they were in a car that was coming to take me to the desert. G-Dog, Wild Man advised me to leave because they had sensed that the atmosphere had changed.

And I left there just before Gerard, Gravano's son, arrived. He said that if the ransom had not been paid, they were going to kill me and that would have simply ended his competition. Sammy the Bull's company came along, did big numbers, lit up the scene, had all the runners running through the raves and clubs saying, "We're the biggest drug barons in the history of the world," these drug-addicted jock characters. steroids, which totally brought the heat to the scene. And that's why he was arrested a couple of years before me. So, I mean, I was basically thanking the police for arresting him, in my mind.

But all those resources turned against me. It was May 16, 2002 when the SWAT team arrived. I thought once I stopped importing, I would get my way. I thought you got caught with drugs. All you need is someone from your past, seven years from now, the statute of limitations, to tell the police that they've made a deal with you and they've got you. I don't need the drugs. We used the New Mexico mafia lawyer. He was an underground lawyer. He paid her $100,000. And that's how we went from 200 years to 9 and a half years without giving away. My first prison was Towers Prison, where neo-Nazis approached me.

To join the gang, to be a member, you have to murder someone for them. There are very few members. There are many executors, associates, people who work for them and who manage the system for them. Arizona, the four major prison gangs, are all racially divided. The whites are the Aryan Brotherhood. The blacks are the Mau Mau. The Mexicans have their own gang. And then there are the Chicanos, who are the Mexican Americans. There are also the Native Americans. And then anyone who doesn't fit, heaven help them, because it's just pure survival of the fittest. Deeply embedded in Arizona's prison system, every gang's top priority is to keep the drug business running smoothly.

You have the staff bringing the drugs. You have the visitors bringing the drugs. They don't want anything to interrupt that. I've done some PSA videos, prison survival tips. Be careful with what you say. Do not presume. Don't let them know you have money. Don't let them know that you have resources. Two months after my arrest, a story appeared in the Phoenix New Times. "English Shaun's Evil Empire", 10 pages. The neo-Nazis found out about this and then pressured me to ask my girlfriend to smuggle drugs through visits because I must have all these drug connections. Fortunately, there was a race riot, and those guys who were trying to pressure me were moved, and after that I joined the Italians, and that pressure on me ended.

He ended up in a jail run by a famous sheriff named Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Over time, you simply saw them. Revolving door.Young people who come in with minor crimes become tougher criminals. It is a university of crime. The conditions in that prison, the cockroaches, the dead rats in the food, the guards murdering the prisoners. For the vast majority of people I was housed with, there was no hope. But that's what keeps prisons running. The illegal black market for drugs created by drug laws is vast. And now we have hundreds of thousands of deaths in Mexico and all these knife crimes in London.

Here's what the police tell us: It revolves around young people competing for black market profits and drugs created by drug laws. He was operating during a relatively innocent phase of the introduction of ecstasy into the United States. Now everything is monopolized by organized crime and it does not matter who is arrested by organized crime. They always have the resources to bribe officials and to keep the drugs flowing. I lost absolutely everything. He spent six years in prison. There's a clip where I'm in a London airport, I think it's Gatwick or Heathrow, and I'm in shock, hugging mum, dad and sister.

Mom is crying in the car leaving the airport. I stayed at my parents' house for a year. Unemployment sent me to telesales interviews and things like that. I would tell them, you know, criminal record, yeah. I couldn't get a job. Dole tells me you have to start lying, tell them you have no criminal record or you will never get a job. But a year later I moved to Guildford. I lived with DJ Mike Hot Wheels, one of my best friends. I lived in his room for 10 years just writing my blog and building my social net

works

. We started the blog in 2004, we started the YouTube channel in 2007.

It was the first prison YouTube channel. I went all over the country interviewing the most interesting people. I'm blessed, you know? Many wonderful people came into my life to help me and spread my message. And I feel like it's my karmic destiny now that we have this platform to help other kids share their story. It was the late 1980s, and suddenly on the news on weekends there were stories of police officers chasing wide-eyed young men dressed in baggy jeans with logos of LSD acid and stuff. In my economics class I had a classmate. He says, "You have to come and check this out." And then we went to the Thunderdome, Oldham Road, Manchester.

Then he said, "Be patient. I'll go get the things for you." So, I took the pill and once I started dancing, I never wanted to stop again. I never wanted the party to end. And I was like, “Phew, I finally found myself.” And that's how raving became my religion. So, going back generations of my family, some settled in Chicago, others retired in Arizona. I had two aunts. Two of my father's sisters ended up in Arizona and I visited one of them when he was a child. When the plane comes to land, you look outside and see all the pools in the backyards.

So I was already thinking, "Hm, maybe I'll want some of this when I finish college." That 's what I did. If I could go back and give myself one piece of advice, it would be to stay on the path of slow and steady progress in life. I started following the stock market when I was 16 years old. I was worth a couple million on the stock market when I was in my twenties. That was before all this drug activity. I didn't need the money. It was the ego. My ego was as big as the Grand Canyon at the top of this.

Pablo Escobar was worth billions. His brother said, "Let's buy our own island and relax and don't get arrested, don't get killed, and don't spend the rest of our lives in prison." Pablo said, "I put the president in power. I have 10,000 people working for me. Do you want me to relax on some boring old island?" It's not money. It's the ego and being a character in the scene.