Letter to the Editor – from a defendant in Farmacia de Juicy Phruit

I was arrested on May 27, 2009 during the “Juicy Fruit” raids. Due to the current legal struggle that I am facing, I choose to stay anonymous at this time, but I do want the truth out there in regards to the majority of the people involved. Let me preface this email by stating that before I was arrested on May 27, I had no criminal history.

On Wednesday May 27, my home was invaded by DEA, ATF & County Sherriff deputies upon which time I was placed in hand cuffs & very firmly dragged around my home with out a warrant for the officers to even enter my house. I was handcuffed just outside my front door. The officers had only a warrant for my arrest, no warrant to enter the home. Regardless, all of the officers entered my house with absolutely no permission. Upon entering my home my wife came downstairs leaving my daughter asleep upstairs. All of the noise & commotion downstairs woke my daughter up and she was standing at the top of the stairs screaming & crying hysterically. Instead of letting my wife go & get my toddler aged daughter, the officers immediately drew their weapons & ran up my stairs while my daughter was standing at the top of my stairs crying. All of the officers ran directly at & across my daughter with all of their weapons pointed directly in the direction of my daughter.. After my house was “cleared” as they called it, I was placed in the car & taken away where I spent about 15 hours in jail.

This is obviously a very condensed & “cliff notes” version of the arrest, but for now hopefully gives you a little in sight to the manner in which the authorities handled this operation. Just as about everyone else involved, I was charged with a Felony for Conspiracy to Manufacture & Deliver Narcotics which “allegedly” occurred in Summer 2007. Let me adamantly state “I HAVE NEVER IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM CONSPIRED, DISTRIBUTED, SOLD, MANFACTURED ANY TYPE OF DRUG OR CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE”. I did buy ONE bottle of Winstrol for my personal use from Charles “Brock” Falkenhagen who is the primary target of this investigation. Brock has apparently ratted on all of the people that he sold to instead of ratting on people that he received the stuff from.

The feds had 2 years to put their case together & if they had done any homework at all I would not be sending this email to you. If they had done any homework over the last 2 years it would have become clearly evident to them that I was in no way involved in any of the activities they are accusing me of, much less conspiracy to manufacture & deliver narcotics. The authorities had absolutely nothing to justify my arrest, especially entering my home with their weapons drawn.

Granted this is a very condensed & cliff notes version of the events, but I definitely want the entire story to be heard. My name & picture has been smeared across all of the major network news channels here in Houston along with the Houston Chronicle. I know my legal problems will go away because I have done nothing wrong. But what I can’t get back is the money I’ve spent on bail (my bail was $30,000….I HAVE NO CRIMINAL HISTORY, WHY SO HIGH????), and $35,000 for an attorney. Not to mention the utter embarrassment of being dragged out of my house in hand cuffs in front of my wife, daughter, & all of my neighbors who were standing in the street when I was placed in the cop car. Not only did the authorities handle this situation completely wrong, they informed the local CBS affiliate before hand. The news crews were riding along with the cops when they raided my home & a few others at their places of work. In a judicial system that hinges on the idea of not guilty until proven otherwise in a court of law, there is no reason to bust down doors & draw guns in front of news crews on everyday people like myself. How can anyone recover from having their faces plastered on the 6 o’clock news being arrested just like you see on the TV show Cops…NOT RIGHT!!

This has not only placed a huge damper on my life, but has literally broken me financially. I have to go through all of this bull shit to clear my name of a crime I never committed. I can also say without a doubt there is a good portion of the people that were arrested that morning who faced the same abuse that morning that I did & have the same criminal history that I have. I do realize that some of the people arrested probably deserved to be arrested, but the majority is guilty of nothing more that personal use.

I hope you can appreciate the fact that I need to stay anonymous until my charges are dropped. I routinely search the internet to see if my name pops up on anything in regards to this & I came across your website. So far the only things that I find are extremely biased & paint a horrible picture of the people just like me that are unfortunately involved. As the Fort Bend County Sheriff, Milton Wright, said on all of the local news channels, “…All of these people arrested today are nothing more than common street level drug dealers…” BULLSHIT, most of the people involved are family men, some doctors, firemen, and other professionals.