Huge Bust Nets Bath Salt Kingpins
Bath salts: Their steady emergence as the designer drug du moment is well-documented. Their powerfully hallucinatory effects on the human brain, legendary. And now, their peddlers have been busted.
An investigation spanning several months resulted in multiple arrests made at head shops and tattoo parlors in Manhattan and Brooklyn, where jonesing salt-lickers could regularly find their next fix of strains with names like "Charley Sheene," "Xtreme" and "Goodfellas."
Miguel Ashby, 26, of Everett, Wash., was charged with heading the ring that authorities said supplied dealers based out of Manhattan shops, including Crazy Fantasy Tattoo in Greenwich Village, Addiction NYC tattoo parlor in the East Village and Smoking Culture on W. 4th St.
The feds also made buys at Fugetaboutit, a Williamsburg head shop where an undercover agent purchased hundreds of grams of bath salts from Yacob Biton, 34.
The distributors' capture is sure to send waves of relief throughout the Eastern Seaboard, where their reputation as cold-blooded bathroom-product kingpins — who'd think nothing of challenging a competing salt cartel by rolling a dozen loofah sponges onto a crowded dancefloor — was legendary. If their arrest prevents even one goaticide at the hands of a rampaging cross-dresser, it will have been worth it.
