A LIFE IN THE DRUG TRADE

In summer 2004, a dramatic murder trial took place in New York City that aptly illustrates how lower-class cultural concerns—the code of the streets—clash with the rules and values of American culture and how deviant cultures can exist side by side with middle-class culture. Two Bronx men, Alan Quiñones and Diego Rodriguez, were accused of heroin traffi cking and killing a police informant. The trial hinged on the testimony of one of their confederates—Hector Vega, a key government witness who had previously pleaded guilty to taking part in the murder. He described in vivid detail how he watched the defendants beat the victim, Edwin Santiago, as he lay handcuffed on the fl oor of a Bronx apartment. He told the jury how the defendants Quiñones and Rodriguez spit in Santiago’s face to show what they thought of police informants. Santiago’s body was found mutilated and burned beyond recognition on June 28, 1999. During the trial, Vega gave the jury a detailed lesson in retail drug operations. In the Bronx, beatings, slashings, and shootings are routinely used to enforce what he called “the drug law”: “If people deserved it, I beat them up.” He showed them a tattoo on his upper right arm that meant “Money, Power, Respect.” Vega, 31, also told the jury that he headed a group of heroin vendors who did business from his “spot,” his sales area, between Daly and Honeywell Avenues in the Bronx. He said he had learned the trade from a stepfather, a building superintendent who he said had a second job as a narcotics entrepreneur: “I always knew about the drug business. I was raised around it.” As a mid-level drug dealer, Vega received heroin on consignment from big-time drug wholesalers and turned it over in $100 packages to people he called his “managers,” who in turn found “runners” to sell it on the street. His job was to “make sure everybody is working, and I will make sure everything is running correctly.” Vega received a “commission” of about 35 percent of all sales in his organization; he estimated that he made a total of at least $500,000 in the fi ve years before his arrest. Vega told how he used strict rules to run his organization. He did not sell between 1 and 3 P.M. because of “school hours.” He did not allow anyone to sell at his spot without his approval, or steal drugs from him, or pass him a counterfeit bill, or taint the quality of drugs sold under his name. If that happened, he said, “I’d be looking like a fool. The drug spot will go down.” When Manny, one of his workers, stole one package of heroin, Vega slashed his face with a box cutter. When the wound did not immediately bleed, “I didn’t see nothing cut, I didn’t see anything I did, so I did it a second time,” he said, until he saw blood. Angered by a counterfeit bill he received from a crack addict, “I punched him in the face, I kicked him, I threw him on the fl oor and kicked him again.” He disciplined one stranger who cheated him by hitting the man in the back of the head with a three-foot tree branch. Police informants were given special treatment. “In the drug world, in the drug law, we say that snitches get stitches,” he said. “In jail you cut their face. In the street, you beat them. You kill them.” Vega testifi ed that the defendants Quiñones and Rodriguez were heroin wholesalers and that he began buying drugs from them a few months before Santiago’s death. After he learned that Quiñones suspected Santiago of working undercover for the police, he helped him lure Santiago to the apartment of a girlfriend where the beatings and murder took place. For his cooperation, Vega faced a 15-year sentence rather than the death penalty.


Source: Julia Preston, “Witness Gives Details of Life as Drug Dealer,” New York Times, 12 July 2004.

Criminal Profile

Andrea (Kennedy) Yates was born on July 2, 1964, in Houston, Texas. She seemed to have a successful, normal life, being the class valedictorian, captain of the swim team, and a member of the National Honor Society. She graduated from the University of Texas School of Nursing in Houston and worked as a registered nurse at a University of Texas–run facility. She met and married Rusty Yates, and the couple began to raise a family. Though money was tight and living conditions cramped, the couple had fi ve children in the fi rst eight years of their marriage. The pressure began to take a toll on Andrea, and her mental health deteriorated. On June 17, 1999, after attempting suicide by taking an overdose of pills, she was placed in Houston’s Methodist Hospital psychiatric unit and diagnosed with a major depressive disorder. Even though she was medicated with powerful antipsychotics such as Haldol, Andrea continued to have psychotic episodes and was hospitalized for severe depression. Her losing battle with mental illness culminated in an act that shocked the nation. On June 20, 2001, she systematically drowned all fi ve of her children, including her eldest, seven-year-old Noah, who tried to escape after seeing his siblings dead, but was dragged back into the bathroom by his mother and drowned also. At trial, Yates’s defense team attempted to show that she suffered from delusional depression and postpartum mood swings that can sometimes evoke psychosis. Though she drowned her children one by one, even chasing down Noah to drag him to the tub, did she really have any awareness that what she was doing was wrong? Postpartum depression affects about 40 percent of all mothers and in its mildest forms leaves new mothers feeling “blue” for a few weeks; more serious cases can last more than a year and involve fatigue, withdrawal, and eating disorders. The most serious form, which Andrea Yates is believed to have suffered, is a psychosis that produces hallucinations, delusions, feelings of worthlessness, and inadequacy. Though very uncommon, postpartum psychosis increases the likelihood of both suicide and infanticide if left untreated. Despite her long history of mental illness and psychiatric testimony suggesting she lacked the capacity to understand her actions, the jury found her guilty of murder on March 12, 2002, ordering a life sentence instead of the death penalty sought by the prosecution. Andrea’s conviction was later overturned when a Texas appeals court ruled that an expert witness, Dr. Park Dietz, made a false statement during the trial. (He claimed she might have been infl uenced by an episode of Law and Order, though no such episode ever aired; it was actually L.A. Law that dealt with a case of a mother killing her children.) At the time of this writing Andrea remains in a psychiatric facility. The Andrea Yates case illustrates the association between mental illness and crime. Who could claim that a woman as disturbed as Andrea chose to kill her own children? While the jury may have reached that verdict, it was constrained by the legal defi nition of insanity that relies on the immediate events that took place and not Andrea’s long-term mental state that produced this horrible crime.


Sources: “Andrea Yates: Ill or Evil?” CourtTV Crime Library, CNN, “The Case of Andrea Yates,” (accessed July 10, 2008).

PLANNING VIOLENCE: MURDER FOR HIRE (crime story)

 While violent acts always seem irrational on the surface they may actually involve careful planning and thought. Nowhere are elements of preparation and design more apparent than in elaborate plots involving murder for hire. Take the case of Paul William Driggers, 54, an Idaho man who offered $10,000 for someone to kill his ex-wife because he was facing child molestation and gun charges and because he wanted his children back. Driggers contacted an associate in prison and asked to be put in touch with a person who could do a job for him. He got the name of a third man who was then living in California. In April 2006, using the name “Huey,” Driggers contacted the California man

and induced him to come to Idaho to discuss a “business proposition.” Driggers and the man met at a Coeur d’Alene restaurant and discussed a number of illegal things they could do, including counterfeiting, producing precursor chemicals for the manufacture of methamphetamine, identity theft, and false charity campaigns. After the two left the restaurant, Driggers told the California man that he wanted his ex-wife killed and offered the man $10,000 for the murder. Instead of committing the crime, the California man contacted state police. When the two later met in a Lowe’s parking lot, the California man was wearing a wire. Driggers showed him photographs of his ex-wife, and the two discussed the details of the murder, including using walkie-talkies to communicate, and how to dispose of the body. Driggers was convicted of attempted murder on February 23, 2007. The Drigger’s case is not unique. Richard Kaplan, a former New Brunswick official who plotted to kill his wife, was already serving a federal prison sentence for accepting more than $30,000 in bribes. While in prison he pursued a murder-for-hire plot through a fellow inmate. Rather than commit the crime, the inmate alerted authorities and became a cooperating witness in an FBI undercover investigation. Kaplan wanted his wife dead because of money issues and the belief that she was planning to get a divorce. Not long after arriving at the prison, he began telling a fellow inmate that he wanted to fi nd someone who could kill his wife and make it look like an accident. He told the inmate he was willing to pay $25,000 for the murder.

LOOTING THE PUBLIC TREASURY (crime story)

After graduating from UCLA, Albert Robles served terms as mayor, councilman, and deputy city manager of South Gate, California, an industrial community about 12 miles outside downtown Los Angeles. Soon after Robles became city treasurer in 1997, he plotted to rule the city purely for his own benefit. He even proclaimed himself “King of South Gate” and referred to the city as his “fiefdom.” Once in power, Robles got involved in a number of convoluted illegal schemes, including:

❚ Using the city’s treasury as his “private piggy bank for himself, his family, and his friends” (according to acting U.S. Attorney George Cardona), costing South Gate more than $35 million and bringing it to the verge of bankruptcy

❚ firing city hall employees at will, replacing them with supporters who had little experience

❚ Recruiting and bankrolling unqualified local supporters for city council until he controlled the council 

❚ Threatening anyone who stood in his way (suspiciously, one of his adversaries on the city council was shot in the head)

Robles and his corrupt cronies then cooked up schemes to line their own pockets with the public’s cash. In one such scheme, Robles coerced businesses to hire a financial consultant, Edward Espinoza, in order to win various city contracts, including senior housing and sewer rehabilitation projects. As part of this plan, Robles and Espinoza set up a shell corporation that raked in some $2.4 million—more than $1.4 million of which went straight into Robles’s pockets. He used part of the money to buy a $165,000 beach condo in Baja for his mother; he also forked over $55,000 for “platinum membership” in a motivational group. In another scheme, Robles steered a $48 million refuse and recycling contract to a company in exchange for more than $30,000 in gifts and campaign contributions. In February 2003, Robles was targeted by a federal grand jury looking into the handling of federal loans and grants. FBI and IRS investigators pored over city records to uncover his illegal schemes. The citizens of South Gate ultimately voted Robles and his cronies out of office (but not before he racked up huge legal bills at the city’s expense), and he was convicted at trial in July 2005. Two of his business associates—including Espinoza—also went to prison. Robles’s illegal acts were the product of careful plotting and planning. They were motivated by greed and not need. To some criminologists, stories like these confirm the fact that many crimes are a matter of rational choice.

Sources: Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Corruption in City Hall: The Crooked Reign of ‘King’ Albert,” January 8, 2007

A PAIN IN THE GLASS (Crime Story)

From 1997 to 2005, Ronald and Mary Evano turned dining in restaurants into a profitable albeit illegal scam. They used the “waiter, there is glass in my food” ruse in restaurants and supermarkets stretching from Boston to Washington, D.C. While crude, their efforts paid big dividends. They allegedly swindled insurance companies out of $200,000 and conned a generous helping of food establishments and hospitals along the way. And to top it off, in order to look authentic, the Evanos actually did eat glass. How did the Evanos pull off their scam? After ordering or buying food at restaurants, hotel bars, or supermarkets, either Ronald or May would “discover” glass in his or her food. They would then complain of the incident to management and fi ll out a report. After leaving the food establishment, they would check into the emergency room at the local hospital complaining of severe stomach pain. After presenting fake IDs and Social Security cards to hospital staff, they’d allow doctors to examine them. In some cases, x-rays would show actual pieces of glass in their stomachs (but none of it came from the food they purchased). Once released from the hospital, the couple would continue getting medical treatment for stomach pain. After racking up several thousand dollars in bills, they would file an insurance claim for their extensive “pain and suffering.” The scheme unraveled when the Insurance Fraud Bureau of Massachusetts noticed a pattern of glass-eating claims in the state. The private industry organization eventually realized that most claims were being fi led by the same couple and contacted federal authorities who then traced the couple’s trail of insurance fraud across three states and the District of Columbia. On March 16, 2006, the Evanos were indicted on mail fraud, identity theft, Social Security fraud, and making false statements on health care matters. Ronald was arrested less than a month later, but Mary—his partner in crime—is still on the lam.

Sources: Department of Justice Press Release, “Man Arrested in Glass-Eating Fraud Scheme,” (accessed June 25, 2008); Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Bizarre Meal Ticket: The Couple Who Ate Glass,” November 8, 2006

THE MOTHER OF ALL SNAKEHEADS (A Criminal)

Cheng Chui Ping was one of the most powerful underworld figures in New York. Known as “the Mother of all Snakeheads”—meaning she was top dog in the human smuggling trade—to her friends in Chinatown she was “Sister Ping.” Cheng was an illegal immigrant herself. Born in 1949 in the poor farming village of Shengmei in Fujian province, she left her husband and family behind and set out for the West, traveling via Hong Kong and Canada before ending up in New York in 1981. She opened a grocery store and started other ventures that became fronts for her people trafficking business. For more than a decade, Cheng smuggled as many as 3,000 illegal immigrants from her native China into the United States—charging upwards of $40,000 per person. To ensure her clients paid their smuggling fees, Sister Ping hired members of the FukChing, Chinatown’s most feared gang, to transport and guard them in the United States. In addition to running her own operation, Sister Ping helped other smugglers by financing large vessels designed for human cargo. She also ran a money transmitting business out of her Chinatown variety store. She used this business to collect smuggling fees from family members of her own “customers,” and also collected ransom money on behalf of other alien smugglers. Conditions aboard the smuggling vessels were often inhumane. The voyages were dangerous, and on at least one occasion a boat capsized while offloading people to a larger vessel and fourteen of her “customers” drowned. The Golden Venture, a smuggling ship Sister Ping helped finance for others, was intentionally grounded off the coast of Rockaway, Queens, in early June 1993 when the offloading vessel failed to meet it in the open sea. Many of the passengers could not swim and ten drowned. Cheng Chui Ping was indicted in 1994 when members of the Fuk Ching gang cooperated with federal agents. After her indictment she continued to run a smuggling operation. In April 2000, Hong Kong police arrested her at the airport. Cheng fought extradition but was eventually delivered to the United States in July 2003. She was convicted in New York less than two years later on multiple counts, including money laundering, conspiracy to commit alien smuggling, and other smuggling related offenses, and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. The activities of Sister Ping illustrate how the law must evolve to confront newly emerging social problems such as illegal immigration. Other areas include cyber crime, drug importation, and terrorism. Unfortunately, the law is sometimes slow to change, and change comes only after conditions have reached a crisis. How might laws be changed to reduce illegal immigration? Should people caught entering the country illegally be charged with a felony and imprisoned?

Sources: FBI News release, “Sister Ping Sentenced to 35 Years in Prison for Alien Smuggling, Hostage Taking, Money Laundering and Ransom Proceeds Conspiracy,” 16 March 2006