From: Nikolaos Daniel Willmore <ndw1@columbia.edu>
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 94 21:30:06 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: FWD: Cellular spoof? Not!
Message-ID: <199408110429.AA17333@merhaba.cc.columbia.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


clari.news.drugs (moderated) #575                                          [1]
Comment: Subject mapped from all upper case
From: C-reuters@clarinet.com (Reuters)
Newsgroups: clari.local.florida,clari.news.drugs
Distribution: clari.reuters
[1] Phone Calls Lead to Cocaine Smugglers
Copyright: 1994 by Reuters, R
Date: Wed Aug 10 21:30:05 EDT 1994
Lines: 18

        TAMPA, Fla (Reuter) - Authorities seized more than a ton of
cocaine and arrested 11 people Wednesday, using information
gleaned from the smugglers' cellular phone calls, a sheriff's
spokesman said.
         The smugglers had tampered with the cellular phones to make
it appear as if the calls were made from other telephone
numbers.
         But U.S. Customs agents and local deputies eavesdropped on
the conversations, using sophisticated technology to trace the
calls to their true sources, said Jack Espinosa, spokesman for
the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.
         The investigators learned the cocaine was being sent from
Panama to Miami in a shipping container with false walls, then
tracked the shipment to Tampa.
        They arrested 10 people in Tampa and one in Miami on
racketeering and cocaine trafficking charges and seized the
cocaine. It weighed in at 2,205 pounds, and is worth about $95