Word: cellular
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...Florida. Officially designated as one of the nation's poorest regions, the area is basking in a cocaine-driven economic boom that has helped fuel a surge in bank deposits. Lavish homes -- paid for in cash -- have been built fronting the Rio Grande, and luxury cars equipped with cellular telephones dot the unpaved streets of such towns as Roma and Rio Grande City. Hard-pressed lawmen fear that they can do no more than hold the line against the traffickers...
...illegal enterprise expanded so swiftly that the crack trade soon dominated the economy of the South Central area. With its many logistical needs, it lured otherwise respectable businessmen into helping out and reaping profits. Like other import firms, Bennett needed delivery vehicles (in this case, fast cars), secure communications (cellular telephones), warehouses (safe houses), banking facilities (money launderers) and retailers (street dealers). As smaller distributors and street sellers all collected commissions while spreading the poison through the black neighborhoods, crack became even more profitable to the area's underground economy than it was to the foreign suppliers...
...supply lower-level dealers with pagers and cellular telephones that were difficult for narcs to overhear, Michael Harris set up a front company, Telesis Electrical Co. He even became a patron of the arts. His money- laundering theatrical production company invested $385,000 in the Broadway production of Checkmates, which ran for five months...
...keep the cops in the dark. On Nov. 6, 1988, two of Michael Harris' delivery men were stopped by Missouri state troopers for driving a van at 68 m.p.h. in a 55 m.p.h. zone. The officers found 1,100 lbs. of coke in the vehicle. They also seized a cellular telephone. Tidily programmed into its memory were Bennett's telephone number in Tempe and that of a Los Angeles company linked to Villabona...
...valuable licenses practically for free on other, equally bogus criteria. After more than a half-century of this foolishness, many of America's largest fortunes derive from ownership of broadcasting franchises. Helms himself has made the odd nickel this way. In just the past few years, the awarding of cellular- telephone franchises has created a whole new category of white male multimillionaires. Reformers have long argued that valuable FCC licenses should be auctioned off, rather than given away, so that the value can be shared...