TheAgitator.com: Paramilitary Raid of the Day: Comments:
"Ariel Alonso and Jonathan Conrad were two lonely men who developed an interest in alchemy. After meeting on the Internet, the two men shared a home in Henry, Virginia, where they practiced amateur chemistry, producing various elixirs that they then sold on their website. Cooky? Sure. But not criminal. Conrad, in his 50s, was into alternative medicine, and generated most of the income from the venture. Alonso, in his 70s, was bit more eccentric -- he dabbled in metallurgy. The two had invested thousands of dollars in the lab, but were able to make a decent living from their web business.
On October 13, 2003, local authorities paid a visit to the home, where they saw the men's chemistry equipment... For reasons still unclear, a "field test" tested positve (there seem to be lots of false positives with these narcotics field tests). The DEA would later admit that test was only "equivocally" positive.
So later the same day, DEA agents raided the men's home. The raiding officers devastated the lab, shattering thousands of dollars in equipment, and arrested the men on charges of manufacturing methamphetamine. The two spent 18 days in jail.
Unfortunately for the drug cops, more extensive lab tests later revealed no sign of methamphetamine, nor of any of the chemicals used to make it. In fact, there were no signs of any illicit substances at all. The two men were released.
Despite their innocence, the DEA refused to compensate Alonso and Conrad for the damage drug agents did to their lab. With no source of income and lots of credit card debt used to buy the lab, Conrad moved in with a relative in North Carolina. Alonso had no family, and so moved back into the home, where he lived on Social Security. When his furnace broke, he had no money to repair it, and had to use his stove for heat. He eventually contracted lung cancer, and died in a low-income nursing home in September 2004."
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