Woodland Hills Man Acquitted in Ecstasy Case

A 26-year-old Woodland Hills man was acquitted by a federal jury Monday in an Ecstasy trafficking case.

After three hours of deliberation, the jury found Gilad Gadasi not guilty of conspiracy to possess with intent to sell 118,420 Ecstasy pills smuggled into the U.S. by a woman aboard a flight from Brussels.

The woman, Jessica Jirak, 21, led customs investigators to Gadasi after she was intercepted during a stopover at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.

Agents arrested Gadasi as he was loading Jirak’s luggage containing the Ecstasy, a synthetic, psychoactive drug, into his car at Los Angeles International Airport.

The agents had equipped Jirak with a hidden tape recorder for her meeting with Gadasi, but it malfunctioned. Prosecutors were forced to rely heavily on Jirak’s version of events, which came under attack from defense lawyer Ronald Richards during the four-day trial in U.S District Court in Los Angeles.

Gadasi did not take the stand. The defense contended that he was nothing more than a hard-working plumber who had no involvement in Jirak’s drug-smuggling activities.

Jirak, who pleaded guilty earlier to conspiracy to possess Ecstasy for sale, is to be sentenced Oct. 15.