In early 2006, a mysterious cosmetics trader named Rakhman began showing up at salons in St. Petersburg, Russia, hawking a popular anti-aging drug at suspiciously low prices.
Rakhman’s “Botox” was found to be a potent clone of the real thing, but investigators soon turned to a far bigger worry: the prospect of an illegal factory in Chechnya churning out raw botulinum toxin, the key ingredient in the beauty drug and one of world’s deadliest poisons.
A speck of toxin smaller than a grain of sand can kill a 150-pound adult.
No Chechen factory has yet been found, but a search for the maker of the highly lethal toxin in Rakhman’s vials continues across a widening swath of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
U.S. officials and security experts say they know the lab exists, along with likely dozens of other such labs, judging from the surging black market for the drugs.
