Three months ago in Madison, Wis., local police and FBI investigators arrested three suspected MS-13 members who allegedly were involved in stealing tens of thousands of dollars' worth of over-the-counter medicines from 22 Walgreens drugstores throughout the Midwest.
Madison detectives and FBI investigators later determined that the medicines were being transported to a warehouse in Louisville to be resold.
"We had not seen evidence of their presence here before (the arrests) or since," says Mike Hanson, spokesman for the Madison Police Department. "Our understanding is they were passing through here. They knew the number of Walgreens stores and were familiar with the routes in and out of town."
In several cases, Hanson says, the suspects used a special bag that blocked the drugstores' electronic sensors from detecting items that were being stolen from the stores.
"The suspects researched Walgreens throughout the Midwest and on a routine basis averaged $45,000 to $55,000 worth of stolen merchandise per day," Hanson says.
Clifford says "it would be dangerous to look at MS-13 as just another street gang."
The rest of the article identifies MS-13 as a Salvadoran street gang which has gone paramilitary. Nasty folks.
2 comments:
But why only pseudophedrine? Shouldn't our overlords also lock up cough syrup, especially cough syrup that has (gasp) alcohol in it? Heck, let's lock everything up so you can't shoplift anything anymore.</sarcasm>
Seriously, to get to $45,000-$55,000/day in OTC medicine, you need a heck of a lot of inside help.
It is anything that has Pseudoephedrine in it, I believe. (Not sure about liquids...) You need to register and have photo ID in order to purchase any of the medication.
In Oregon (where you can legally get help to commit suicide) they wanted to make it mandatory to have a prescription for Sudafed-type products. So in addition to paying for the medication, you get to pay co-pay for the office call to get the prescription...oh, and because OTC Sudafed in generic boxes does not hit the cost of your prescription co-pay, you won't get any reimbursement that way, either...
As one who has severe allergies to anything you can breathe or touch, with resulting sinus and respiratory problems, who uses pseudoephedrine legitimately, it makes me angry.
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