Federal Agents

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A guard opened fire at a federal prison yesterday as federal agents tried to arrest him and five others in a sex-with-inmates scandal, sparking a gunfight that left him and an Orlando agent dead. Agents shot and killed Ralph Hill, 43, a guard for about 12 years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee. William 'Buddy' Sentner, 44, a special agent with the Justice Department's inspector general office who worked in Coleman, died in the exchange of bullets.

Federal drug agents and police from the city and Baltimore County staged coordinated raids at 26 residences yesterday, arresting 14 people on drug and weapon charges. Seized in the 5:30 a.m. raids were more than $100,000, several firearms and crack cocaine, said Detective Donny Moses, a city police spokesman. In a raid on a house in the 500 block of McMechen St., police found a loaded semiautomatic handgun hidden under the mattress of a child's bed, Moses said. The raids resulted from a lengthy undercover drug investigation in the city's Upton area and sections of the county, Moses said.

Federal agents seized items from Social Security Administration headquarters in Woodlawn yesterday, apparently as part of an investigation of alleged fraud. About noon yesterday, about a half-dozen people - some of them with lettering on their clothing identifying them as federal agents - were seen taking what appeared to be numerous boxes from the lower east building at the Social Security Administration offices and loading them into an unmarked blue van. An agent at the scene would not comment.

Two men arrested by federal agents after their fleeing vehicle crashed into a car at a Baltimore intersection Wednesday were charged yesterday with conspiring to distribute heroin. Court documents allege that one of the suspects is the leader of a city drug ring and the other is his supplier from New York. After the crash, agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said, they confiscated six kilograms of heroin and duffel bags containing $400,000. DEA agents wrote in paperwork filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore that they have been targeting for several months members of a drug distribution organization allegedly run by Payton Green.

SAN JUAN IXTAYOPAN, Mexico - One day after a mob burned two federal police officers alive and beat a third, believing they were kidnappers, the residents of this town were still angry. And unapologetic. "We'll keep taking justice in our hands if in 20 days police don't end kidnappings, robberies and police corruption," said one indignant housewife, who like nearly everyone here asked not to be identified. The beatings and burnings of the Federal Preventive Police agents were the latest cases of vigilante action in a country fed up with crime.

A Washington-bound Amtrak train was stopped in Cumberland yesterday as federal agents questioned two male passengers said to be of Middle Eastern descent who were acting suspiciously, officials said. The men, who live in the Baltimore-Washington region, were detained for several hours after another passenger noticed one of them with a bulky item under his shirt, said Barry Maddox, a spokesman for the FBI's Baltimore field office. The object - which Maddox would not identify for fear of discouraging reports of suspicious behavior - turned out to be inconsequential.

Federal immigration agents have seized more than $1 million from bank accounts belonging to a Howard County massage parlor operator who officials allege ran a prostitution ring using illegal immigrants as sex workers. Federal affidavits related to the seizure of money from Sung Yul Kim, 65, describe a wide-ranging operation that also dealt in bribery, money-laundering, falsified documents and other illegal activities in a bid to drive competitors out of business. Kim, who lives in Fort Lee, N.J., is accused of offering to buy 20 fake green cards for illegal immigrants for $300,000 and paying a Howard County police lieutenant working undercover more than $4,000.

Federal authorities and local police seized more than 150 kilograms of cocaine - valued at $4 million wholesale and as much as $40 million on the street - late Wednesday in the Baltimore area and have filed federal drug importation charges against a New York man, officials said yesterday. Law enforcement officials called the narcotics seizure one of the region's largest in recent years. "This is a huge arrest, this is a lot of drugs that are not going to reach the streets of our city," Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin P. Clark said at a news conference with federal authorities and other local law enforcement officials to announce the seizure.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Federal agents raided homes in Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania yesterday, bringing charges against a group of men who authorities say belong to a violent anti-American terrorist group and were training for possible attacks abroad. In a 41-count indictment unsealed yesterday, 11 men, nine of whom are U.S. citizens, were charged with conspiracy and weapons violations. Officials said they were part of an effort to conduct jihad, or holy war, against Chechnya, India, the Philippines and Kashmir, the disputed region claimed by Pakistan and India.