Michael Isikoff
26 July 1988
The Washington Post
U.S. officials yesterday said they had broken up an international narcotics smuggling ring headed by Dennis Howard Marks, a flamboyant trafficker who once beat drug charges in Britain by claiming to be working for British intelligence. Marks, an Oxford-trained physicist, was arrested in Spain yesterday as federal prosecutors in Miami unsealed an indictment charging him and 21 alleged co-conspirators with operating a worldwide ring that smuggled marijuana from Thailand and hashish from Pakistan into the United States and Europe.
Because of the many countries in which Marks was alleged to be operating, "I'd call him the Marco Polo of the dope world," said Tom Cash, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's Miami office. The DEA named Britain, West Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and the United States as among the countries in which Marks' organization operated.
Marks, 42, was arrested and tried on drug charges in England in the 1980s. But in a well-publicized trial, he was acquitted after claiming that he was acting under the direction of MI-6, the secret British intelligence agency.
Marks' exploits were later the subject of a popular book, "The Shocking Life and Times of Howard Marks," in which he bragged how he avoided the drug charges against him. Marks also boasted how he exploited the lack of international cooperation to operate his drug business and launder millions of dollars in profits through expensive London boutiques and other legitimate businesses.
Law enforcement officials said yesterday they found the book helpful in investigating Marks' organization. In addition to Marks, police yesterday arrested his wife in Spain and Patrick Alexander Lane, Marks' brother-in-law, in Miami. Cash said Lane was the chief money launderer for the Marks group, setting up phony companies in the United States.
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