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As the city's rave scene changed from spontaneous get-togethers to organized, clandestine parties complete with code words and secret phone lines, Papa and his friends were drawn to the action and quickly began to see the moneymaking possibilities. Using a supplier in Las Vegas, they began distributing low-grade ecstasy pills to clubs or wherever else the party drug was wanted. "Papa didn't need Sammy to teach him to be a gangster. He came by it honestly," explained a source familiar with the group. By all accounts, the ecstasy ring was led by Papa, a premed student on the dean's list at Arizona State University, who used former high school friends to distribute the drug. Soon he began to emulate Gravano's life: he bought a flashy silver BMW M3 and began to hang out at his own choice table in some of the more upscale clubs. But, police say, Papa was still a small-time dealer. "It was 100 pills here and another 100 there."
Until that time, police drug busters had been focused on the flood of pot and cocaine coming across the border from Mexico. But as the ecstasy scene broke into the mainstream, the cops started to take action. Phoenix police sent in a young female undercover detective to start making buys. "We had to tell her to stop, she was getting so much," said a law-enforcement source. They were also surprised by how widespread the use of the drug was among young suburban kids. "Only 1,000 ecstasy pills were seized in all of Arizona the previous year. Now we were finding it everywhere," says a police source. Shortly after the Phoenix police began climbing the distribution ladder, they began to hear one name over and over. It was Gravano. As the police were dealing with low-level dealers, the Drug Enforcement Agency intercepted a large Federal Express shipment of ecstasy in San Francisco. Faced with arrest, the dealer mentioned a name that stopped the feds in their tracks: Gravano.
The two agencies mounted a joint investigation. From October until last January, police teams shadowed virtually every move Gravano and Papa made. They also intercepted 16,000 phone conversations.
With demand soaring, police say, the operation run by Papa made the leap from being one of hundreds of small rings to importing the drug in quantity. A Phoenix police spokesman explained that during the department's surveillance, Papa and his friends "changed the methods under which they operated after learning from Sammy. They became more aggressive, showed a lot of force and were more organized. It was almost like they were being schooled." They also began to use Gravano's name to intimidate other dealers and took to carrying guns. Almost overnight, police say, the gang became the top supplier of ecstasy in Arizona. At its height, police estimate, the ring was selling as many as 10,000 pills a week and raking in almost $1 million a month.
Over the next several months, police would watch as the gang made the rounds of restaurant parking lots to deliver ecstasy to couriers and buyers. Among the spots the gang used for dealing ecstasy was Uncle Sal's, a restaurant owned by Gravano's wife Debra; its motto was "The Best-Kept Secret in Scottsdale." Police say the restaurant was in her name only because Sammy could never pass the background check for a liquor license.