Thanks, Brij.

NEW DELHI

Narcotics Control Bureau agents who listened to the phone taps found the case odd.

Dr. Brij Bansal was an educated, respected member of the Baniya business caste. He held a license to dispense medicine in India as well as an export license. But the way Indian drug officials read the law, those documents didn't allow Brij to ship pills to America.

The agents listening in NCB's high-tech, air-conditioned wiretap room were convinced Brij knew he was breaking the law. Why else would he caution shippers to use phony manifests? Why else pay six times the going price for shipping? Why stockpile the pills in the humid basement of someone's home?

The wiretaps showed that Brij prided himself on performance. Sloppy service and poor products made him angry. He never gloated about the money.

So why break the law so brazenly? Why put his son and daughter, the spammer, in such peril? Brij was already worth tens of millions of rupees.

And why hadn't he tried to hide the money? Many drug dealers cloaked ill-gotten gains through hawalas, the ancient, informal money-transfer system.

Not Brij. He bought real estate and opened routine bank accounts.

How about the phone? To avoid detection, most dealers switched cell phones monthly.

Not Brij.

The wiretaps offered a few explanations. First and foremost, father and son doubted they would ever get caught. And if they did, they figured they could simply claim that they thought their license was valid for export, or that they had never authorized shipments under false names.

Besides, the Bansals figured, what was the worst that could happen? A warning? A fine? A few seized packages? Please.

ROXBOROUGH

IRS agent Aaron Carp, young, eager, was relaxing inside his Wissahickon apartment, fiddling with his new TiVo gadget shortly before midnight, when it hit him.

He dialed James Pavlock, the prosecutor for money-laundering.

"Jim, I've got this really cool idea."

For a month, Carp and Pavlock had struggled to trace and verify Akhil's overseas accounts, which could prove what the Bansal e-mails seemed to show - drug dealing on a global scale. Normally, U.S. authorities would use international treaties to subpoena the accounts, but because the arrests were only 60 days away, they didn't have enough time.

Carp's shortcut was devilishly simple: He exploited a cog in the global banking system. Unbeknownst to Akhil, virtually every overseas wire transfer was routed through one of a handful of large American "correspondent banks," including J.P. Morgan Chase, all under U.S legal jurisdiction.