THE STORY SO FAR

Now that agents know Temple grad student Akhil Bansal is Mr. Big - the brains behind the biggest global Internet pharmacy network DEA has ever seen - they call in reinforcements from Washington. Today's installment begins as agents try to wiretap Akhil's e-mail. It is January 2005.

CENTER CITY

Lead prosecutor Barbara Cohan paced her office, red-faced, ponytail flying. She yelled into the phone.

"If it's not ready for prime time, why the hell are we using it?"

Once again, Cool Miner, the wiretapping software, had broken down.

Barb hadn't expected miracles, she told the DEA techie down in Washington, but now that they had arranged for a Hotmail clone account to wiretap e-mail, lugging two PCs up from northern Virginia, she wanted it to work.

DEA had used the program a few times for smaller cases, in other cities - catching bad guys in midsize towns - but never in Philadelphia. With a case this complex, the techie protested, Cool Miner had become overloaded by too many e-mails, too many attachments, too much volume.

The Help Desk was working on it.

Barb seethed. DEA had a new mandate from on high to go after online pharmacies! With a computer program so lame, how did the agency expect to catch such sophisticated criminals, a global network moving 50,000 pills a day? Three years after 9/11 and DEA was still struggling to tap e-mail!

Fix it, she said.

When the wiretap did work, it was fabulous. Authorities could track the suspected kingpins in real time, reading each e-mail to and from Temple University graduate student Akhil Bansal and his father, Brij, a doctor in India. E-mail attachments included spreadsheets of detailed pill orders. Amazingly, the Bansals didn't encrypt most e-mail.

From: Brij Bansal

To: Sanjeev Srivastav