Law enforcement officers have a knack for looking for the unusual and the weird. If something doesn’t seem quite right, then they will often question the matter – just to check. Sometimes, as with the case of a Canadian man who was engaged to marry an American woman, there is a very logical reason for all the border crossings that has nothing to do with the sale of drugs or any other items. In that case, the frequent questioning becomes a bit of an annoyance, but there is still the known argument that the official is just doing his job.
State patrolmen watch for swerving cars, and erratic driving. Often this behavior – perhaps caused by substance abuse or nervousness – leads to the arrest of a drug trafficker.
And so it was the oddity of a shipping log that caused federal agents in Anchorage to wonder why a certain vehicle had been shipped back and forth from Seattle to Anchorage several times. They wondered why in the world anyone would keep shipping a 1990 truck with 300,000 miles on it back and forth and back and forth. Anchorage DEA found $12,000 inside of the car.
This led them to examine a Ford Explorer that was known to have made several trips into Mexico. The culprits placed the vehicle on a barge in Seattle set to go to Anchorage. Seattle DEA agents searched it, finding 23 pounds of methamphetamine in a secret compartment under a rear seat. This was the largest amount of meth ever discovered in Washington State’s history, and its retail value meth was between $1.2 million to $1.4 million.
Investigation led them to the recipient of the vehicle and meth package, who was arrested. On Friday April 22, 2011 Ricky Alan Reese, 52, was sentenced to life in prison.
Reese is a resident of Anchorage and the former owner of a billiards parlor in Wasilla. He had prior felony convictions for drug trafficking, so this was his last straw.
The best news is that this oddity led to a huge dent in the Alaska meth trade, driving the cost up to $4000 an ounce.
