Fort Myers man arrested on drug charges in Cape Coral | news-press.com | The News-Press: "James Desoto Ladson, 25, is charged with two counts of selling cocaine, two counts of possessing cocaine, one count of selling marijuana, one count of possessing drugs without a prescription, one count of marijuana possession and one count of possessing narcotic equipment.


Ladson was arrested Saturday and booked into the Lee County Jail. He was released a few hours later after paying $18,000 bail."

charged with three felonies in connection with the shooting death of a teen on Myrtle Avenue. John Saway, 25, and Santa Ana resident Sarith Yin, 22, on Tuesday joined four others facing similar charges.Juan Carlos Rodriguez, 16, was shot in the upper back early Jan. 10 during a party at an apartment on Myrtle Avenue in Tustin. Friends pulled him into the apartment, where police found him dead two hours later.
Saway and Yin are charged with murder, street terrorism and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.They are charged with sentencing enhancements for a gang member discharging a firearm causing death, criminal street gang activity and murder committed for a street gang purpose. Yin pleaded guilty in January 2008 to attempted burglary of a commercial building and street terrorism, and was sentenced to 16 months in state prison and restitution. Saway in January 2007 pleaded guilty to receiving a stolen vehicle while having a prior felony conviction, evading a peace officer and reckless driving and possession of a firearm by a felon.
In the same case, Yin pleaded guilty to criminal street gang possession of burglary instruments or tools. Both men were sentenced to one year in state prison, according to court records.
In March 2005, Saway pleaded guilty to stealing a vehicle, buying or receiving a stolen vehicle or equipment, and evading a peace officer and reckless driving, according to court records. He was sentenced to two years in state prison, 210 days in jail, restitution and three years' probation. In December 2003, he pleaded guilty to unlawful taking of a vehicle and possession of controlled substance paraphernalia. Yin also had a court history including guilty pleas to unlawful taking of a vehicle and buying or receiving stolen equipment in November 2005 and attempted burglary of a business and street terrorism from July 2006.
Saway and Yin were found by detectives inside a vehicle in Long Beach, police said, and were wanted by their parole officers. Ravy Nhem, 20; Pablo Kachirisky, 21; Steven Kao, 21; and David Escobar, 20, also have been charged with felonies for murder and street terrorism, with sentencing enhancements making them eligible for the death penalty, according to Lt. Tom Tarpley of the Tustin Police Department.The men are being held without bail. The enhancements are murder committed for a criminal street gang, criminal street gang activity and a gang member discharging a firearm causing death, Tarpley said.
Karrina Hernandez, 21, of Tustin, is charged with being an accessory to murder, police said.

"Local authorities need to pay attention to the emergence of synthetic drugs, they are the drug of the future," said Vitor Cesar Carvalho dos Santos, head of the narcotics department in the Rio police department. "This is a health problem."
Brazilian police said Thursday that it arrested 55 people in nationwide operations to crack two crime rings that were smuggling ecstasy, LSD and other synthetic drugs into the country from Europe.The police nabbed the suspects in eight Brazilian states, 47 of them in Rio de Janeiro, said Chief Enrico Zambrotti, the Federal Police coordinator of Operation Knockout, one of the two police operations.
Most of those arrested were people in their twenties from middle-class families with no prior criminal histories, Zambrotti said.

The trafficking rings earned several hundred thousand dollars a month in a scheme that involved using drug "mules" to smuggle cocaine to Europe and then return to Brazil with synthetic drugs, the police said.

The operations began 10 months ago, investigators have arrested some two dozen drug mules that were suspected of carrying the drugs in from Europe and seized more than 100,000 ecstasy pills, the police said.