By ANDY JACKSON
Marmot??s Hole Guest Blogger
Another source of financing for Pyongyang has just dried up. An international smuggling ring with links to North Korea, China and Thailand has been busted by American law enforcement officials:
North Korea-linked smugglers have been arrested by U.S. authorities in a sting operation involving counterfeit money, drugs and cigarettes, items the communist state has long been suspected of shipping overseas, a diplomatic source here said Wednesday.
The Justice Department announced Monday that it recently arrested 57 people linked to an international smuggling ring based in Asia. The arrests led to the indictment of 87 people.
“I believe that the people arrested were not North Koreans. They are probably Americans who deal with North Korea,” the source said.
The ring relied on operatives overseas and within the U.S. to smuggle goods and currency by way of New Jersey and Los Angeles, the department said.
Just so we are clear on this, the group busted was not only dealing with North Korean drugs. The group apparently also got drugs from China and Thailand.
This particular criminal group was apparently a little more sophisticated than the bunch who got caught while trying to smuggle Nork drugs into Australia.
Of course, Nork drug smuggling and counterfeiting is nothing new. Such criminal activity could be seen as a sign of a breakdown in government authority, except in this case at least some of the smuggling is being run by the North Korean government.
One Free Korea is all over this.
12 Comments
Interesting. There was also a story over on Yahoo about this.
I say interesting because, check out the names of 4 of the people arrested in San Diego county:
Frank Marogi Najor, 61, of La Mesa
Hamza Beydoun, 44, of San Diego
Basam Salem, 29, of Spring Valley
Bashar Kareem Salem, aka, Sean Salem, 25, of Spring Valley
Those names all sound Middle Eastern/Muslim - I’m curious about the other people that were arrested.
I thought most of the drug smuggling and fake money was directed by the North Korean government and sometimes included dignitaries using foreign service cover?
I remember at least one North Korean defector who was a farmer talking about how the government forced him to grow poppy for drug production even though people were starving to death in the 1990s….
One of the reason’s Atta wasn’t touched prior to 9/11 was his connection to a drug smuggling ring which high ranking members of the government were also involved.
drugs and cigarettes ……………. that’s a joke right?
Korean newspapers reported that this particular sting was about a Chinese Mafia. FBI planted two operatives to the China crime syndicate six years ago. These two actually participated in criminal activities to gain the trust of mob bosses.
Then, pretending a wedding, they invited all bosses to the U.S. Once in the country, FBI needed no international extradition proceedings.
Hooray, for FBI.
Some of these guys had fake U.S. dollars, presumably manufactured in NK.
N. Korea-Related Drug Ring Caught in NJ
It has been known for sometime that North Korea supplements its meager revenues by engaging in drug dealing, counterfeit currency manufacturing and other manners of organized crime (and if there ever was a organized criminal state, it is North Korea to…
. . . Such criminal activity could be seen as a sign of a breakdown in government authority, except in this case at least some of the smuggling is being run by the North Korean government.
One could make something of the same accusation about South Korea. South Korea is one of the few countries where major ISPs like Korea Telecom and even the people who manage the Korean internet connection with the rest of the world (KIDC), the Korean Internet Data Center, routinely spam and sponsor phishers, scam artists, child pornography — all while their government brags about having such high internet usage and the only people reporting some of this activity are foreign entities like Spamhaus.
I realize that vice is human but these guys make vice into a virtue. If it were not for the fact that Kornet, et al. sponsor criminal activity, it would be like having a hi-tech truck vendor whose loudspeaker is the internet.
R.elgin,
But if you put it that way, I think that you will find this problem is pretty endemic in most of the world. If you want to talk about ISPs that is known for spamming or abuse, I would *love* to block off all emails from comcast. There’s also the problem that most Korean mail servers aren’t well protected and many Korean PC’s are windows spam zombies. (heck many PC’s all over the world are windows spam zombies, and I admit rather shamefully that I know, ’cause i was a victim)
You can get all those crazy files right from Sweden, at Pirate’s bay website or the horde of cyrillic russian ware/z sites. But you seem to believe that the SK government endorses these kind of activities from SK ISP.
Let me put it to you this way. Right here in Manhattan where I work, downtown is the office of Direct Revenue. This is a “legal” company that essentially creates viruses and damages systems all over the world and routinely sends out spams. There are TONS and TONS of these “direct marketing” legit firms that operate here in the US. But I don’t go so far as to say that the US Federal government encourages virus writers, because the law hasn’t caught up with the technology.
I just don’t think it’s objective to say that ROK engages in criminal activities by encouraging internet abuse.
Here’s a link for you about the state of spywares in teh US
http://www.businessweek.com/te....._tc024.htm
VW, I would point out as bad as Comcast is (they really are), they are not government-owned. Korea Telecom is mostly owned by the Korean Government. I would say that constitutes a vested interest by the government and a tacet acceptance towards such activity, especially since The KISA (Korean Internet Security Agency) no longer handles spam complaints. If you had been reading the reports from Samhaus — some of which are offline now — you would read of “corporate escalation” on the part of Korea Telecom. This was all during early part of this year and last year, right before Kornet went off the top ten list of spamming domains. I have also spent more time tracking some of their activities ?? more time than I would like to confess to ?? out of curiosity. To be fair, I am begining to suspect that the US Government is quietly allowing this to run free in the US as well. Like quite a few governments, it is not what they do but what they don’t do that speaks of their nature.
R.elgin,
Korea Telecom is not state owned as of 2002:
In July of 1987, the government unveiled a privatization plan for KT and sold 28.8 percent of the fixed-line giant for 2.71 trillion won by 1997. As part of the government??s sweeping privatization plan in mid-1998, the process at KT received a major boost. By 2000, the government sold another 15 percent and 14.7 percent of KT to foreign and domestic investors, respectively.
In May of 2002, the government yielded all of its holdings in KT, auctioning off its entire 28.4 percent stake to institutional and individual investors. KT employees also bought a 5.7 percent stake in their company.
I am behind the times then regarding KT’s coporate status.
Regardless, Korea Telecom is pretty much as “Virtual Wonder” described the other company in New York. They apparently derive much revenue from spamming, complete with designing trojans that turn other PCs into zombies for spamming. Much of this activity seems to have something to do with a part of Korea Telecom called “Korea Telecom e-biz Quick Marketing Team”.