He worked with chemist William Leonard Pickard and their associate, Clyde Apperson, to make and distribute LSD in and from Aspen, Colorado; Sante Fe, New Mexico; and two former missile silos in Salina and Wamego, Kansas.

On November 6, 2000, the DEA seized the organization's property as a part of their investigation Operation White Rabbit; the administration claimed this led to a 95% decline in worldwide LSD availability by 2004.

Afterwards, she married Gary Lee Magrini, who was a special criminal agent with the Department of the Treasury (which performed drug investigations at the time), as well the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Criminal Enforcement Agency and the Northern District of Oklahoma's Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.

His method of ingesting them was through "The Eucharist", a communion wafer tainted with lysergamides like ALD-52, extract from morning glory seeds, and ergot wine.

The FBI found Skinner's tip to be true, and Merit eventually fled to South Africa after he and five co-conspirators were indicted for a penny stock fraud.

Olarte's wife, Clara Lacle, who lived with Magrini, flew to Aruba with FBI agents to set up Silva.

Worthy was arrested at the hotel, and a day later, Skinner pleaded guilty to one reduced count of conspiracy, and was given a three-year probation.

On December 7, Skinner flew to Grand Cayman, and set up the sting operation with Gloucester County detectives and an agent from the DEA Miami field office.

[4][12] While Skinner was in Jamaica, he met Everett LaVay McKinley, a preacher from South Dakota who set up the World Fidelity Bank in Grenada.

He opened an account with a Philadelphia brokerage house that specialized in foreign currency options, again claiming he was an heir to his mother's fortune.

He claimed to Tulsa World that he sat on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, and managed a currency trading company called FINIX.

[4] That year, he also became addicted to prescription painkillers,[17] and married Oklahoma State University medical student Kelly Sue Rothe.

In April 1999, a friend of Skinner's, and a Tulsa computer company employee, Paul K. Hulebak, overdosed on methadone and hydromorphone and died in the silo.

Afterwards, Skinner formed a deep relationship with Cole; he initiated her into a Christian-esque religious order, and said "we worshipped each other as divine interlocking pieces of God.

It was in this context that Pickard started a moveable chemical processing facility at a house in Aspen, Colorado, which Skinner was involved in.

Skinner and Pickard left Aspen in late 1998 or early 1999 due to high rent, chemical spills, and the house being in disrepair (which required the visitation of carpenters and plumbers).

[3][25] They moved the business to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Pickard had purchased a lab area from a local contractor under the pretense of it being a writer's retreat.

After two years, to avoid suspicion, Skinner, Pickard, and their mover Clyde Apperson, stopped the New Mexico operation and went prospecting for a new location in Kansas.

The features of the new location "made government intrusion nearly impossible"; the structure was harder to break into, and was surrounded by more space and a military fence.

[1][3][27] During the investigation, he took DEA agents into the Wamego silo under the guise of a property tour, and recorded phone calls he made with Pickard.

[3] Pickard and Apperson's convictions caused the entheogen community, which was "just gaining ground with legitimate research and studies", to fall apart.

In 2005, John P. Walters of the ONDCP testified before Congress, saying that Pickard's operation had enough material to make 25 million doses of LSD.

[3] Skinner said he was in a good mood in early 2003, and planned to leave the United States, but eventually became "disheveled and unkempt", having lost weight and sleep over his falling out with Pickard, and his presence to investigating authorities.

Around the same time, Cole was dating an 18-year-old drug dealer named Brandon Andres Green, from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.

Skinner thanked Green for taking care of Cole, and said the three of them would be escaping the country, floating an idea of dredging harbors in the Caribbean.

[3][34] Skinner believes that Green stuck around because he could inform to the DEA; he had been recently arrested on a drug charge in Lebanon, Missouri.

Cole said that Skinner and Hauck phoned a federal agency (maybe the FBI or CIA) as informants, and they gave their "agent numbers" during the calls.

The book includes a letter she claims Skinner sent her from prison: "I went to the DEA and got you out of trouble, you brought Brandon into my life and I got hurt bad.

[3] In September 2003, Skinner was indicted by a federal grand jury for dealing ecstasy at the 2003 Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert.

Skinner has claimed that Green's trauma was self-inflicted, as well as that the kidnapping was a government conspiracy, citing the emails of Litchfield and Hough.