Opinion ID: 68570
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Fish Bowl Drug-Trafficking Ring

Text: In May 2006  approximately 17 months before Rhine's arrest for the instant drug offense  an ongoing FBI investigation known as the Fish Bowl investigation culminated in a large-scale drug raid in Fort Worth, Texas. The raid resulted in the indictments of more than 30 individuals for a variety of criminal offenses, most of which involved drug trafficking. [3] After conducting post-arrest interviews with many of the individuals apprehended during the raid, FBI Special Agent J. Coffindaffer (SA Coffindaffer) reported that several individuals had implicated Rhine in the criminal drug activity. [4] As agents were unsuccessful in completing a controlled drug buy from Rhine, he was not charged along with the other Fish Bowl participants. After Rhine's arrest in the instant case, SA Coffindaffer reinitiated his investigation into Rhine's participation in the Fish Bowl drug-trafficking ring. SA Coffindaffer first interview ed Rhine, who stated that he had moved into his mother's house several months after the Fish Bowl arrests to lay low and to avoid getting in trouble. Rhine said that he had been unemployed since his release from state prison in 2005, yet was unable to explain how he had supported himself, his children, or his drug habit during that time. [5] Rhine further claimed that he had not sold any narcotics or possessed any guns since his 2005 release. According to Rhine, the guns found during the search of the vehicle had belonged to Moore, even though Rhine acknow ledged that his fingerprints might be found on one of the firearms because he had loaded it. Rhine also stated that both he and Moore had first met Buchanan, a crackcocaine user, when they picked her up from a service station shortly before their arrest. After interviewing Rhine, SA Coffindaffer conducted a series of follow-up interviews with the individuals who had initially implicated Rhine in the Fish Bowl drug-trafficking ring, questioning them about their experiences with Rhine before the Fish Bowl raid and their ensuing arrests. One informant indicated that he had purchased approximately 15 grams of cocaine base from Rhine on a single occasion; another indicated that he had received approximately 62 grams of cocaine base from Rhine every week for almost three months; and a third indicated that he had regularly cooked between five and six kilograms of powder cocaine into crack cocaine for Rhine over a period of several months. According to these informants, Rhine was one of the primary, large-scale suppliers of crack cocaine to the mid-level Fish Bowl dealers prior to the FBI raid. SA Coffindaffer also interviewed Lavell Buchanan, the passenger seated in the back of Moore's vehicle at the time of Rhine's arrest. Buchanan stated that she had initially walked to a service station to purchase beer but decided to purchase crack cocaine instead when she learned that Rhine and Moore were selling it from a dark-colored van in the parking lot. According to Buchanan, she did not know either Rhine or Moore before that meeting, during which she had agreed to purchase five dollars of crack cocaine from them. Buchanan stated that she, Rhine, and Moore were driving to her apartment to complete the transaction when police stopped them.