Voice ID Snares Drug Kingpin in Brazil

Colombia's Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia arrives to a federal police station after being arrested in Sao Paulo, Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2007. Abadia, a top leader of Colombia's biggest cocaine cartel, was captured Tuesday in South America's largest city after a two-year investigation into traffickers accused of sending tons of the drug to the United States and Europe. Abadia, who faces three U.S. federal indictments on drug and racketeering charges, was arrested just after dawn at a house in a gated community on Sao Paulo's outskirts.(AP Photo/Marcio Fernandes-AGENCIA ESTADO) BRAZIL OUT (Marcio Fernandes - AP)

SAO PAULO, Brazil -- A reputed leader of Colombia's biggest drug cartel radically altered his facial appearance with repeated plastic surgeries. But his own words gave him away, thanks to advanced voice recognition technology that has become a key tool in the war against drugs and terrorism.

U.S. agents confirmed the identity of Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia using the equivalent of a vocal fingerprint, his attorney said Friday.

Brazilian police had closed in on Ramirez Abadia's properties in and around Sao Paulo, and were probing his alleged laundering of the Colombian cartel's drug profits. But because of his surgeries and multiple aliases, they lacked the positive identification needed for an arrest warrant.

They got their break by taping his telephone conversations, his lawyer, Sergio Alambert, told The Associated Press.

Colombian officials provided a recording they had of Ramirez Abadia, and both sets of recordings were passed to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, which made the match, Alambert said.

Richard Mei, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia, confirmed the DEA assisted in the Brazilian investigation of the drug lord, whose Norte de Valle cartel allegedly shipped 550 tons of cocaine to the United States from 1990 to 2003. Mei declined further comment.

With the positive ID in hand, police swooped in on 22 locations in six Brazilian states, and caught Ramirez Abadia on Tuesday in a luxurious home with a gym, sauna, plasma TVs, a swimming pool and nearly $1 million in stashed cash.

Authorities on Friday said they tracked down another $1.5 million that had been buried in a garden for Ramirez Abadia near Sao Paulo. The money was moved after his arrest by a Colombian identified only by his first name, Jaime, who was arrested along with his Brazilian chauffeur, police said.

U.S. intelligence agencies have used voice recognition for decades, but the technology has become much more effective in recent years through improvements in software that rapidly analyzes vocal frequency patterns, said Jim Hunter, a partner in the Merlin Risks security firm in Sao Paulo.

"The way you use your voice is as individual as fingerprints," Hunter explained. "If they have a sample of a known voice and they get an unknown sample of sufficient length, they then test the unknown against the known."

The process is more complex than fingerprinting because peoples' voices are different when they speak normally, yell or whisper _ but the software breaks down different frequencies and uses statistical analysis to make matches.

Governments keep close guard on the most advanced voice recognition technology, but almost anyone can run a personal computer by voice now, "which means the software has made rapid progress. The machine can read the patterns and respond to the patterns," Hunter said.