Jan 8, 2009 9:47 pm US/Pacific
Investigators Arrest 7 In Elaborate Meth Scheme
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) ―
Seven people are under arrest after local investigators cracked a case of an elaborate scheme to make meth.
The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department say Margarita Reyes came to buy pseudoephedrine from a local Raley's as part of an elaborate scheme to make methamphetamines.
"All they did was go from pharmacy to pharmacy all day long five days a week," say authorities.
Detectives say Reyes sometimes worked alone, but she wasn't the only one who used a child as an excuse to get the drugs.
"That the mother said her daughter had the sniffles and needs some allergy medicine," detectives say.
Police say Reyes was one of the five people called "Smurfs" who bought the legal drugs for up to a year then sold them to be made into meth. Detectives say they tracked the "smurfs" for two months as they purchased pseudoephedrine in Reno, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and several cities in Northern California.
All together, officers followed them to 140 stores, 40 of them in the Sacramento area.
By law, a pharmacist can only give out 3.6 grams of pseudoephedrine to a person per day, and they must keep a log at the drug store so the suspects would hit up one pharmacy and then go across the street to another.
Investigators think this particular group hit more than 1000 stores.
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