Akhil Bansal, a daredevil driver, in his red Ford Mustang. Now, the Temple grad student was assuming a central role in his family’s illegal online drug business, seeking ties to a Costa Rica-based enterprise.
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.
How This Series Was Produced
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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.
What Carlos initially viewed as a quick-hit investigation had morphed into something much bigger, perhaps the case of his career.
Four months earlier, Carlos traced 119 packages of generic Valium and Viagra to a Chester shipper and two Indian graduate students. The shipper was an ex-con. The Indians looked like small-timers, couriers maybe.
The identity of the real targets - the Internet pharmacy kingpins - wasn't clear yet. But already a clue found at the shipper's storefront had led to something called Rx-mart.com, and from there to an Australian pharmacy with global tentacles.
So far, DEA had identified suspect Web pharmacies in Australia, India, Germany, New York, Virginia and Philadelphia. The pharmacies bought generic drugs for pennies a pill, then sold them online, without requiring a prescription, for a dollar apiece.
In a report Carlos shared with Homeland Security, he wrote: "Early investigative findings indicate... sales of $108 million annually... . This organization generates enough revenue per year to purchase a virtually unlimited supply of drugs."
