‘Molly’ kingpin pleads guilty to smuggling club drug to Miami, faces 10 years in prison
A generation ago, when “Molly” was all the rage in Miami’s club scene, an Italian by the name of Nello Quagliani delivered much of the drug supply, U.S. authorities say.
Quagliani and his European-trafficking network shipped at least 200,000 MDMA pills from the Netherlands to Miami between 1996 and 2000, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
After 20 years on the lam, Quagliani was extradited from South Africa in September, held without a bond, and now has owned up to his crime in Miami federal court. On Friday, he pleaded guilty to three conspiracy charges accusing him of importing and distributing Ecstasy along with money laundering more than $400,000 through foreign currency exchanges.
Quagliani, 61, faces 10 years in prison under a joint recommendation by prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and lawyers with the Federal Public Defender’s Office at his sentencing on July 26 before U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz.
Quagliani is the last of about 30 defendants in his ring who have been prosecuted and convicted on the Ecstasy smuggling charges, according to court records and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Federal prosecutors had been asking for Quagliani’s extradition from South Africa since 2003, when he was arrested by Interpol authorities, court and government records show. But Quagliani, with Italian and South African citizenship, obtained a bond and managed to avoid being extradited for the next 19 years — until he was flown on a plane in September to Miami.
An extradition request, filed by former federal prosecutor David Weinstein in Miami, put Quagliani at the top of an international ecstasy-smuggling network based in the Netherlands, where the drug was allegedly purchased in massive volumes.
“Nello Quagliani provided the MDMA to the members of the organization in Europe as well as received money from the corresponding sale of the MDMA after it had been successfully smuggled into the United States,” Weinstein wrote in the extradition request, which included a federal indictment and DEA criminal complaint and affidavit.
“Nello Quagliani also assisted in the collection of the proceeds from the sale of the MDMA,” he noted, adding that the profits in U.S., Canadian, Dutch, Swiss and German currencies were smuggled out of the United States.
According to the DEA affidavit and other records, Quagliani collaborated with associates in his ring to buy hundreds of thousands of ecstasy pills from Holland between 1996 and 2000. He was accused of hiring couriers to transport the drug, a hallucinogenic stimulant that at the time was popular by the street name Molly in South Florida’s clubs, on commercial flights to Miami International Airport, according to the affidavit filed by retired DEA agent Joseph Kilmer.
Kilmer developed a confidential source who had dealings with Quagliani and another partner, John Moya, the affidavit says. Through undercover recordings, the agent was able to link both men to a Jan. 22, 1998, shipment of 5,774 tablets of MDMA that were seized at MIA by U.S. Customs inspectors.
“The [confidential source] stated that Quagliani and Moya are large-scale distributors who send MDMA from Holland to the United States and elsewhere,” the affidavit says.
The source recorded calls with Moya who admitted “his own involvement” in the January shipment to Miami, the affidavit says. Moya later traveled to Miami and met with the DEA agent and source, admitting in recorded statements that he and Quagliani organized the January load of Ecstasy seized at the airport.
After his arrest, Moya said that Quagliani was his “partner” in MDMA trafficking.
