From Nanjing, a bustling city on the south bank of China's Yangtze River, the package traveled over 8,000 miles to make its way to an unassuming barbershop along Miami's Coral Way. It didn't contain hair-care products.
At a Miami Customs warehouse, suspicious federal inspectors flagged the nondescript brown paper parcel sent from someone named only Alva. Inside, they found a variant of methylone, one of a host of synthetic chemicals sold as the euphoric club drug known as Molly.
A records check revealed that in just two months, 21 similar packages from China had been mailed to the Heads Up Barbershop just outside Coral Gables. After a 20-month investigation, which included an undercover agent posing as a mail carrier, federal authorities this spring quietly arrested a 28-year-old former Florida International University honors student named David "Sway" McConnell. He was using the small shop as a drop for an illegal party-pill operation -- built entirely on chemicals imported in bulk from China.
For McConnell and other dealers in South Florida and across the country, the loosely regulated pipeline of synthetic drugs from China has created a new model for doing business in the digital age. Tech-savvy dealers order from overseas suppliers with just a few mouse clicks and pay with simple money transfers. They don't need go-fast boats or drug "mules," long the smuggling tools of old-school narco-traffickers. Dealers in the booming synthetics trade use the trusty U.S. Postal Service or big-name parcel shippers.
"There is no typical drug dealer anymore," South Florida's U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer said. "It's easy to get access to this stuff. It's less dangerous and less risky. These new drug dealers are using the Internet, and all they need is a runner to go intercept the package from overseas."
Read more ~> http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/crime/article35417625.html#storylink=cpy
they just posted a whole e-book looking article on a methylone controlled delivery in the same area...they are really milking this stuff arent they.