INDIANAPOLIS -- Federal officials in Indianapolis and Evansville Tuesday announced the indictment of 46 people, including 34 charged in Indianapolis as members of a ring that distributed more than 150,000 pounds of marijuana for 12 years, generating more than $50 million in illicit income.
Eleven of the 12 people indicted in Evansville have been arrested on charges that include conspiracy to make and distribute methamphetamine and to distribute hashish oil.
At least eight of the Indianapolis defendants named in a 53-count indictment have been arrested, but four of the main figures in the case remain at large. Three of them are in Austria and the fourth also probably is outside this country, officials said.
Acting U.S. Attorney Bradley L. Williams and officials from four other federal agencies told a news conference all the Indianapolis defendants are charged in a 12-year marijuana trafficking conspiracy that began in September 1975. The drug was brought in mainly from Colombia, but some was from Thailand, he said.
The defendants 'laundered' millions of dollars through various domestic and offshore corporations so the money would be 'clean,' allowing them to masquerade as legitimate businesspeople, according to the charges.
Brothers Paul Heilbrunn, 33, and Richard Heilbrunn, 36, formerly of suburban Indianapolis and now living in Austria, are alleged to have organized, run and financed the ring with the help of their mother, Linda Leary, 56, also now living in Austria, the indictment said.
A similar role was played in Michigan by an individual known only as 'Joker,' the indictment said, while Jeffrey L. Collins, in Florida, allegedly directed the obtaining of the marijuana.
Collins was prosecuted in Florida, but has been a fugitive since last December, Assistant U.S. Attorney John J. Thar said. He and Bradley said chances are good that the Heilbrunns, Leary and Collins eventually will be brought to trial in this country.
Along with Leary, Indianapolis lawyer Robert N. Davies, 52, is accused of having assisted in the establishment of the corporations, trusts and bank accounts used to launder the money, officials said.
Paul Heilbrunn, who has been living in Austria since late in 1985, fled the country because of the investigation, Thar said. Heilbrunn was a commodities broker in Indianapolis and wrote a weekly column on the subject for a local newspaper until he left.
Federal magistrates were expected to conduct bond hearings starting Wednesday for the defendants in the case, which was assigned to U.S. District Judge Larry J. McKinney.
The Evansville indictment named Thomas G. Bergman, 35, of Boonville, as the principal offender, alleging he was chemist for four illegal drug laboratories that operated in Evansville between May 1983 and December 1984.
