Akhil Bansal with his fiance, Foram Mankodi, a pediatrician from Bombay. Before he proposed, Akhil hacked into her e-mail account to make sure that she really cared for him. He told her about the snooping, and she found it charming.
THE STORY SO FAR
Temple grad student Akhil Bansal and his dad in India are making millions smuggling pills to Americans who buy them online. Today's installment begins as DEA agents race to Australia, hoping to head off a move that could ruin their big case. It is October 2004.
ABOARD QANTAS FLIGHT 12
DEA agent Eric Russ sprawled across three seats on a southbound 747, earplugs in, eyeshades on, sound asleep.
His partner tried to relax, too, but several hours into the overnight flight to Sydney, Carlos Aquino was wide awake. Carlos had been busting drug dealers since 1969, when he was a trim military policeman in Vietnam. But he had never worked a case so important, so complex.
And now, with just three days' notice, he was scrambling to get to western Australia.
Carlos looked into the dark Pacific sky, then pulled out a 41-page report marked "DEA SENSITIVE."
How This Series Was Produced
|
The document summarized the six-month investigation: Agents traced three packages of generic pills at the Philadelphia airport to a Chester storefront. A receipt at the storefront led them to something called Rx-mart.com, which was hosted by a Web server in Texas. Keen detective work by FBI agent Jason Huff revealed that the person paying Rx-mart.com's bill was a cocky 25-year-old named Andrew Shackleton who lived in Australia, where he appeared to run a multimillion-dollar online pill ring.
DEA believed that Shackleton used pill suppliers around the globe, including bit players such as Temple University graduate student Akhil Bansal.
DEA hoped to extradite Shackleton and charge him under a U.S. law - "operating a continuing criminal enterprise" - that carried a huge hammer, a 20-year minimum mandatory sentence. The law had been aimed for use against mobsters and drug kingpins. This would be among the first uses against Internet pill pushers.
At DEA's request, the Australian Federal Police had checked Shackleton's bank records and shadowed him in Perth. But now AFP wanted to bring Shackleton in for questioning, which could tip everyone else under investigation. It might ruin the U.S. case.
Which was why Carlos and his partner were in such a hurry to get to Perth.
MANHATTAN
Foram Mankodi, a pediatrician from Bombay, led her fiancé, Akhil Bansal, toward the Halloween parade in Greenwich Village.
A pocked goalie mask hid Akhil's broad face; he was Jason from the movie Friday the 13th. Foram, her dark hair under a peaked hat, dressed as a witch.
The Halloween festivities, she hoped, would provide a break from their increasingly hectic lives. Akhil's workaholic ways were wearing him down.
Not only was he pursuing two master's degrees from Temple, but Akhil was also managing his father's India-based business - supplying pharmaceuticals to companies that sold them to Americans on the Internet.
In the year since he had proposed, Foram watched Akhil grow the U.S. side of the business from a two-person, 1,000-pill-a-day operation into a 10-person, 50,000-pill-a-day enterprise. Already, the intense 26-year-old had earned his first $1 million, money he used to buy a new five-bedroom, $420,000 condo in an affluent Delhi suburb.
But she didn't love him for his money. After they met at the Temple library, their first dates were visits to the Franklin Mills mall. Back then, they took walks on Kelly Drive and watched Friends and Seinfeld. Now, Akhil was promising to fly her to London for New Year's Eve.
Their parents didn't know about the engagement; the couple was going to wait until Akhil graduated and they could return to India.
