French Connection - The 1970s and The Dismantling of The French Connection

The 1970s and The Dismantling of The French Connection

Following five subsequent years of concessions, combined with international cooperation, the Turkish government finally agreed in 1971 to a complete ban on the growing of Turkish opium, effective June 29, 1971. During these protracted negotiations, law enforcement personnel went into action. One of the major roundups began on January 4, 1972, when agents from the US Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD) and French authorities seized 110 pounds (50 kg) of heroin at the Paris airport. Subsequently, traffickers Jean-Baptiste Croce and Joseph Mari were arrested in Marseille. One such French seizure from the French Connection in 1973, netted 210 pounds (95 kg) of heroin worth $38 million.

In February 1972, French traffickers offered a U.S. Army sergeant $96,000 to smuggle 240 pounds (109 kg) of heroin into the United States. He informed his superior who in turn notified the BNDD. As a result of this investigation, five men in New York and two in Paris were arrested with 264 pounds (120 kg) of heroin, which had a street value of $50 million. In a 14-month period, starting in February 1972, six major illicit heroin laboratories were seized and dismantled in the suburbs of Marseille by French national narcotics police in collaboration with U.S. drug agents. On February 29, 1972, French authorities seized the shrimp boat, Caprice des Temps, as it put to sea near Marseille heading towards Miami. It was carrying 915 pounds (415 kg) of heroin. Drug arrests in France skyrocketed from 57 in 1970 to 3,016 in 1972. Also broken up as part of this investigation was the crew of Vincent Papa, whose members included Anthony Loria Sr. and Virgil Alessi. The well-organized gang was responsible for distributing close to a million dollars in heroin up and down the East Coast during the early 1970s, which in turn led to a major New York Police Department (NYPD) corruption scheme. The scope and depth of this scheme are still not known, but officials suspect it involved corrupt NYPD officers, who allowed Papa, Alessi, and Loria access to the NYPD property/evidence storage room at 400 Broome Street, where hundreds of kilograms of heroin lay seized from the now-infamous French Connection bust, the missing heroin replaced with flour and cornstarch.

The substitution was discovered only when officers noticed insects eating all the bags of "heroin". By that point an estimated street value of approximately $70 million worth of heroin had already been taken. The racket was brought to light and arrests were made. Certain plotters received jail sentences, including Papa. (Papa was later murdered in federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia; several conflicting reasons why have been suggested). The French Connection investigation demonstrated that international trafficking networks were best disabled by the combined efforts of drug enforcement agencies from multiple countries. In this case, agents from the United States, Canada, Italy and France had worked together to achieve success.

Ultimately, the Guérini clan was exterminated in the French underworld. In 1971, Marcel Francisci was accused by police forces in the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics of being involved in the trafficking of heroin between Marseilles and New York City.

On 16 January 1982, Marcel Francisci was killed in Paris, France. He was shot to death in the parking lot of the building where he lived as he was entering his car.