In the eyes of prosecutors, Fawzi Al-Arashi was more than a small time drug dealer.
He was a wholesaler who bought his synthetic marijuana in California, repackaged it at an Amherst warehouse and resold it across New York State, they say.
Al-Arashi, 34, of Williamsville, was charged Wednesday after a search of his Ridge Lea Road warehouse turned up 30,000 packets of the drug, federal law enforcement officials said.
"In essence, this was a one-stop shop," said Dale Kasprzyk, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Buffalo, "but not just in the retail area, but the wholesale area as well."
Kasprzyk said the investigation into Al-Arashi started with phone calls from suspicious parents, many of them with young children hospitalized after using the drug.
On top of that, his office received a report from the DEA office in Los Angeles several months ago that a suspected shipment of synthetic marijuana was headed for Buffalo.
"We combined all that information together and began to learn that Mr. Al-Arashi was the owner, operator and manager of the operation," Kasprzyk said at news conference today.
The operation, he said, turned out to be bigger than Al-Arashi's Town Tobacco store at 3407 Delaware Ave. in the Town of Tonawanda or his Welcome, Welcome store at 140 Main Street in North Tonawanda.
"This is believed to be the biggest synthetic marijuana seizure in Western New York history by a factor of two," said U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul Jr.
Investigators said they also seized four of Al-Arashi's bank accounts, which included about $725,000, as well as about $50,000 worth of silver bars and coins found in his Williamsville home.
Al-Arashi is charged with possession and distribution of a controlled substance analogue and made his first court appearance today before U.S. Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder.
Al-Arashi's arrest is the result of an investigation by the DEA, New York State police, Cheektowaga, Amherst and Town of Tonawanda police and the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority police.
