Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Win at all costs - Federal sting often put more drugs on the streets

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Federal sting often put more drugs on the streets (cont.)

A little help from his friends

There’s another problem with government drug stings: They sometimes create a drug problem where none existed.

Ben Kalka had been a bit player in the San Francisco drug world off and on for most of his life — mostly scoring small hits of cocaine — but at the time of his arrest in 1982, he’d become a major supplier of methamphetamine on those same San Francisco streets.

Cheaper than cocaine and heroin, it induced many of the same sensations, including quick addiction.

Federal agents had set Kalka up in a sting. But by the time Kalka began manufacturing the drug, the Drug Enforcement Administration insists the sting had ended, an argument Kalka finds bizarre.

By the time the government caught up with him, Kalka figures he’d produced 8,000 pounds of drugs worth $10 million, using ingredients federal agents had arranged for him to buy.

Kalka should have been suspicious of his good fortune in 1980.

A chemist friend had asked him to find a barrel of phenyl acetic acid, a key precursor for the manufacture of methamphetamine. Kalka had a contact at a chemical company who said there was no way he could get him the chemical. While it wasn’t illegal, the government scrutinized who bought and sold the chemical.

A week later, this contact called to say he could get Kalka a semi-truck load of the chemical precursor weighing 25,000 pounds. All Kalka needed was the money — $250,000.

What Kalka didn’t know was that in the interim, the contact, Paul Palmer, had become an informant for the government after being busted for selling the very precursors Kalka had bought.


	Michael Riconosciuto goes through his notes while explaining his role in a federal drug sting in California. On orders of federal agents, Riconosciuto obtained chemicals needed to make methamphetimine and distributed it on the streets. (Darrell Sapp/Post-Gazette)

By now, Kalka was hooked. He set up a partnership with another drug dealer, Paul Morasco, to get the money, then began his search for the last ingredient he’d need for the speed — monomethylamine. Palmer put him in touch with Michael Riconosciuto, whose past included shadowy connections with various U.S. intelligence agencies, unbeknownst to Kalka.

Riconosciuto greeted Kal-ka like a long, lost brother. He claimed Kalka had once talked him out of suicide when they were imprisoned in the 1970s at Lompoc federal prison. Kalka vaguely remembered Riconosciuto.

Riconosciuto said in a recent interview that he was working for the FBI when he connected with Kalka and the agency told him to find the monomethylamine for Kalka as part of the sting operation. When the chemical was delivered, the FBI planned to bust Kalka and various subordinates.

The plan failed miserably, an array of court documents show. Kalka, naturally mistrustful of almost everyone, managed to divert the tractor-trailer truck carrying the chemicals away from federal agents who were tailing it.

Even so, Kalka wonders today why the FBI didn’t track him down once the methamphetamine began hitting the streets. The agency maintains it eventually stumbled across Kalka’s drug enterprise during another undercover operation.

Soon, he had produced what might have been the largest batch of methamphetamine produced in this country.

And it was all with chemicals supplied with the help of federal agents.

When he was finally arrested, Kalka gave the government $1 million and 1,000 pounds of methamphetamine, all that remained of the 8,000 pounds of the drug he’d produced, in exchange for a promise that he would serve no more than 10 years in prison.

A judge ignored the prosecutor’s request and slapped Kalka with a 20-year sentence. In the meantime, Riconosciuto was arrested and convicted on a methamphetamine manufacturing charge. From his prison cell in Coleman, Fla., he described the role of federal agents and their authorization for him to sell Kalka the final ingredient needed to make the methamphetamine.

Kalka says the government’s complicity in supplying the drugs might yet win him release from prison if he can convince a court to hear him.

In the meantime, he has been moved from one prison to another because of his repeated attempt to sue the government over his case and the conditions of his incarceration.

A drug-related millionaire

Charles Hill also earned a fortune in illegal drugs, but he did it legally.

He opened Triple Neck Scientific Co. in 1985 near San Diego. Four years later, he had amassed more than $9 million in profit from the specialty chemical business, selling the precursors needed to manufacture methamphetamine, which was becoming popular in Southern California.

Hill didn’t need to hide his operation from the government. He was working for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which tracked down more than 100 of his customers, arresting them for using the precursors in illegal drug-manufacturing operations.

The only problem was that the government didn’t recover all the chemicals that Hill had sold. Federal officials admit that the precursors they didn’t recover were likely transformed into thousands of pounds of methamphetamine that was eventually sold on American streets.

Most of those caught in the government’s web quickly pleaded guilty and went off to prison.

Those who appealed based on the government’s tactics were rebuffed. The appeals court said convictions could be overturned only if "government misconduct has been so outrageous that it results in a violation of due process," or was "so grossly shocking and so outrageous as to violate the universal sense of justice."

The court ruled it was not. "Unsavory conduct alone will not cause the dismissal of an indictment."