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The government alleged that the drugs were smuggled into this country by six Israeli nationals, whose base was a flat in Forest Hills, Queens.

"This is an extremely significant case because it shuts off one of the most active supply lines for Ecstasy in the New York region, distributing as many as 100,000 tablets a week," said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

Authorities seized 300,000 tablets of the drug, worth an estimated $7.5 million on the street, and said the ring pumped some 100,000 pills a week into metropolitan New York.

The drug, which reportedly was made in the Netherlands and Belgium, is a hybrid of the hallucinogen mescaline and the stimulant amphetamine chemically known as MDMA.

"This case demonstrates that the Netherlands and Belgium have become the main location for manufacturing and exporting MDMA," Donnie Marshall, acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said in a statement.

"To add to the globalization of this problem, Israeli and Russian organized-crime syndicates have gained control of the smuggling of MDMA from Europe into the U.S.," he said.