THE BUFFALO NEWS

SON OF ENVOY, FRISCO 'BROKER' ARE BIG FISH IN FBI DRUG 'STING'
By Dan Herbeck | Published December 1, 1988

A globe-trotting San Francisco man and the son of an African ambassador are the key drug traffickers arrested in an international "sting" operation that started in Buffalo, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

"Operation BUSICO" -- a three-year investigation that resulted in 200 arrests -- had its beginnings here, but the probe's real focus was on international drug connections, U.S. Attorney Dennis C. Vacco said.

"It's very important to us that this investigation began in the Buffalo FBI office, but the most important drug connections were made in places all over the world," Vacco said.

Although some of the local suspects are considered associates of organized crime in the Buffalo area, the investigation did not prove that local Mafia leaders are directly involved with drug traffic, federal officials said.

The probe got its start with information from a Buffalo informant in 1983 and was headquartered in a bogus import-export operation that the FBI set up in a nondescript Hamburg storefront.

Agents of the Customs Service helped the FBI with the import office after learning from the informant that Sicilian drug lords wanted to establish such an operation in the United States.

Results of the sting were announced Thursday in press conferences in Buffalo, Washington, D.C., and Rome. The Italian news agency ANSA said the people named in the Italian arrest warrants were members of the Satola, Gambino and Inzerillo crime families in Italy and the United States. The state-run RAI-TV said several top Mafia figures were among those arrested. Police stressed that not all those arrested were connected with the Mafia.

All but one of the 13 arrests made in Buffalo were described by Vacco and FBI officials as relatively minor in comparison to those made in Italy and throughout the United States.

But of the two men identified as big players in the entire operation, one was arrested in Orchard Park.

Nigel Sevan Soobiah, 40, of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, was arrested late Wednesday night after he delivered a kilogram of heroin to undercover FBI agents in an Orchard Park apartment, agents said.

Andrew M. Cooper of New York City, described as a minor player, also was arrested as an accomplice of Soobiah’s.

Soobiah, an antique dealer, is the son of a diplomat in Mauritus, a small nation on the eastern coast of Africa, according Special Agent G. Robert Langford, commander of Buffalo's FBI office.

The second man identified as a major player in the trafficking was arrested in San Francisco.

Sergio Maranghi, 51, was arrested on cocaine trafficking charges there Thursday. He and Soobiah were identified as the key suspects who helped agents make drug connections from Amsterdam to Rio de Janiero, Brazil.

Maranghi presented himself as a traveling international drug "broker" and apparently held no other occupation, FBI agents said.

As word of the arrests -- more than half of them in Italy -- spread through the Buffalo area Thursday, defense attorneys were critical of the probe.

"My client is charged with selling two ounces of cocaine to an informant on March 29, 1988," said John F. Humann, lawyer for Angelo P. Rizzo, who is charged with distribution of two ounces of cocaine. "To turn something like this into a story about a world drug ring seems pretty wild to me.”

But neighbors of the Hamburg storefront where the agents ran their sting operation said the arrests confirmed suspicions that something odd was afoot there
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The company, known as BSC Partake Wholesale Inc., was located in the South Shore Plaza. Those who did business in the plaza said they suspected the location was being used for criminal activities -- not police activities.

Agents chose the BSC acronym because it stood for "Buffalo-Sicilian Connection," Langford said.

"I always wondered what was in there," said a waitress who works in a nearby restaurant. "It seemed like it was a front for something.”

Plaza workers said the Southwestern Boulevard storefront was rented out about three years ago by a man -- apparently an FBI agent -- who told them he was in the wholesale food business and could get them bargains on cheese and tomato sauce.
"We never took him up on it," said the waitress, who asked to remain anonymous.

Although initial plans called for heroin and cocaine to be shipped inside cans of tomato sauce and olive oil, drugs never actually came through the Hamburg location. But the agents' involvement in the business gave them a front that allowed them to deal with international drug traders, Vacco said.

"People who thought they were dealing with some shady import-export guys who dabbled in drug-dealing were actually dealing with the FBI," the U.S. attorney said.

This also enabled the agents to become involved with the 12 local men, most of whom were arraigned on minor drug-trafficking charges, Vacco said. Two of these 12 suspects were charged with selling counterfeit luxury watches to the agents.

Attorneys for some of the Buffalo suspects late Thursday criticized the federal prosecutor for publicly announcing their clients' arrests as part of a crackdown on the international drug trade.

Humann, the lawyer for Rizzo, accused Vacco's office of making "wild exaggerations" about his client and others.

Humann said that he doesn't think the Buffalo suspects have any connection whatever to international drug trading. Similar comments were made by another defense attorney.

"From what I can see, the FBI had an informant running around the West Side, trying to buy cocaine," Humann said. "One of the suspects (Frank Grisanti) is only charged with selling one gram to him.”

Vacco said no exaggerations were made in government press releases on the case. He said his office made clear that the Buffalo suspects were believed to be involved in local drug traffic only