THE STORY SO FAR: Pills discovered at Philly's airport launch DEA's first global Internet pharmacy case, leading agents to a rendezvous with a mysterious shipper and a clue from overseas. Today's installment begins as Akhil Bansal, smuggling a half-million pills a month here from India, prepares for the biggest business meeting of his young life. It is July 2004.

ROXBOROUGH

"A red tie?"

Akhil Bansal scoffed. So far, he had accepted most of his roommate Atul Patil's advice for the big meeting: Put together a compelling PowerPoint presentation. Lean forward when you speak. Exaggerate your expenses, and expect the buyer to do the same. Above all, don't budge on price.

But the color of a tie? What difference could it make?

"It is a business tie - red means power," explained Patil, also an MBA student at Temple University. "You want them to take you seriously."

Akhil knotted the tie. The Manhattan meeting his father, Brij Bansal, had set up from India was too important to ignore any detail. A Costa Rican client sought an exclusive deal to buy 500,000 generic pills a month. Millions of dollars were at stake.

Akhil stepped from his apartment near Fairmount Park in Philadelphia and into the humid day. The laptop he carried contained a PowerPoint presentation of which he was very proud - one that months later would come back to haunt him.

He revved his Chevy TrailBlazer and sped toward Manhattan.

CHINATOWN

Like most law enforcement agencies in Philadelphia, DEA liked to keep cases in the family.

When other agencies got involved, DEA worried about losing control. Or sharing the credit - what feds called "the stat" - or sharing cash, cars and property seized in the arrests.

Carlos Aquino understood this.

He also understood that this case was different. DEA had never conducted an Internet pharmacy case on such a scale. It needed help.