4 Arrested Over Alleged Missiles-For-Medication Deal In New York

NEW YORK (AP) — 4 males related to a Japan-based crime syndicate referred to as “yakuza” had been charged with seeking to negotiate a deal to switch high-powered guns for medicine with an undercover U.S. agent, federal prosecutors introduced Thursday.

The boys had been arrested previous this week in Big apple after a sting operation led by means of the Drug Enforcement Management. Prosecutors stated the DEA agent infiltrated the group by means of posing as an fingers broker desperate to industry surface-to-air missiles — possibly intended for warring factions in Myanmar — in alternate for methamphetamine and heroin destined for New York Town.

“The expansive succeed in of transnational prison networks just like the Yakuza gifts a major risk to the protection and well being of all communities,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram stated in a commentary.

The defendants made preliminary appearances in federal court docket in Big apple, the place they had been ordered held with out bail, prosecutors stated. A message was once left with a attorney for Takeshi Ebisawa, a Jap nationwide who was once singled out as an alleged ringleader of the native staff.

Courtroom papers describe the yakuza as an “global prison community, which spans Japan, Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka and the USA.”

The papers added that the defendants who had been allegedly in the hunt for the handle the DEA undercover “understood the guns to had been manufactured in the USA and brought from United States army bases in Afghanistan and deliberate for the narcotics to be allotted within the New York marketplace.”