From http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/...Cocaine%20Bust
SEATTLE -- A former Portland, Ore., millionaire entrepreneur has been charged in what authorities say is the biggest cocaine seizure in Snohomish County, 372 pounds worth an estimated $34 million.
Douglas Bryan Spink, 33, operator of a farm for the breeding of jumping horses in Chilliwack, British Columbia, was charged with drug possession after being stopped in a sport utility vehicle in Monroe, authorities said Wednesday.
Spink, known in Portland for a passion for extreme sports as well as for the roller-coaster course of his business dealings, was being held at the federal detention center in SeaTac pending a hearing Monday in U.S. District Court.
According to documents filed in court, he was going 5 mph over the 35 mph speed limit when his green Chevrolet Tahoe was stopped by a Monroe police officer Monday evening on U.S. 2 at the request of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who had been following him.
Spink, traveling with a German shepherd and a golden retriever, had entered the state through Sumas, southwest of Chilliwack, and got five suitcases from a man driving a truck that investigators had linked to a drug-smuggling group, government lawyers wrote.
Bricks of cocaine that were found in the luggage amounted to the biggest haul in the county's history, Snohomish Regional Drug Task Force Sgt. John Flood said.
During the 1990s U.S. 2 was popular for cocaine being transported through a drug pipeline extending from Mexico to Yakima, but that corridor has been largely abandoned in favor of Interstate 90, Flood said.
Six years ago, at age 27, Spink gained attention in Portland with a $5.4 million deal to sell Timberline Direct, a fitness product catalog business, to GI Joe's, a chain of sporting goods stores.
In late 2000 a private Internet technology investing and investment consulting company he co-founded, Seedling Technology Ventures, agreed to be purchased by Brighton Technologies of Allendale, N.J., in an unusual deal that gave Seedling stockholders control of the resulting company, Seedling Technologies.
A profile in The Oregonian in December 2001, called Spink a "financial swashbuckler" who enjoyed kickboxing, ultramarathons in the mountains, rock climbing and base jumping, parachuting from cliffs, bridges, tall buildings and radio towers.
Spink, nursing a broken ankle from a base jump at the time, was described as the son of a steel company executive in Pittsburgh who earned a master's degree in business administration from the University of Chicago in 1994 and was working on his doctorate.
He told the newspaper his favorite quotation was by Theodore Roosevelt: "It is the doer of deeds who actually counts ... not the man who looks on ... without himself sharing the stress and the danger."
Within a year, his fortunes had reversed and he was in bankruptcy proceedings, court records show.
Spink drew a different kind of attention on Jan. 12 when Border Patrol agents spotted him in a rented SUV in the Loomis National Forest in northcentral Washington state, an area "utilized by various groups to clandestinely smuggle narcotics through the border," federal investigators wrote.
He had a satellite telephone, "acted very nervous" and told the agents he was there for recreation, according to court documents.
Originally Posted by Tom Aiello
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