It had all the ingredients of an edge-of-your-seat sequel to Steven Soderbergh's acclaimed 2000 film Traffic: a mindboggling stash of $207 million in cold hard cash found in a police raid on a mansion in one of Mexico City's most elegant neighborhoods, a shady Chinese businessman with a taste for Las Vegas casinos and Lamborghinis who had ambitious plans to produce container-loads of methamphetamine on an industrial scale, allegations of a campaign slush fund that reached into the government cabinet of a country that is synonymous with corruption the world over.

   But there was something about Zhenli Ye Gon's story that didn't quite add up. The fugitive businessman went public on July 1 with charges that most of the money found in his house four months ago actually belonged to the National Action Party of Mexican President Felipe Calderon--and that Calderon's Labor Secretary had threatened to kill Ye Gon during the 2006 presidential race if the high-living Asian didn't agree to store duffel bags containing $150 million in his palatial residence. The gathering doubts about Ye Gon's yarn did not stem primarily from the emphatic denials issued by the cabinet minister in question, Javier Lozano Alarcon, and Calderon. It was actually the Chinese businessman himself who managed to undermine his own credibility at every turn: speaking from an undisclosed location in the United States in a conference call to reporters in Washington last week, Ye Gon and his attorneys incorrectly identified Lozano by name and failed to produce any of the video or audio recordings once promised to support his sensational accusations.

   Mexico has been buzzing with rumor and speculation about the case ever since the morning of March 16 when newspapers splashed photos across their front pages of the sprawling stacks of bank notes found in the Ye Gon manse. The plot seemed to thicken when it was announced that the Chinese businessman was a naturalized Mexican citizen whose application with the immigration authorities had been processed in record time. Television newscasts aired four-year-old footage showing the diminutive Ye Gon shaking hands with then President Vicente Fox at a ceremony held to honor a group of freshly naturalized citizens of the republic. Some newspaper columnists published fanciful accounts claiming that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) would soon place the Chinese fugitive in a witness protection program in exchange for whatever juicy secrets he still had up his sleeve about drug-fueled corruption south of the border. But it all came to a tawdry and rather anti-climactic end on Monday night when Ye Gon was apprehended by DEA agents as he was dining in a Rockville, Md. restaurant. Mexico must file papers seeking his extradition within the next 60 days, and Calderon government officials say they have every intention of bringing the high-living businessman to justice in his adopted homeland. Stay tuned, Mr. Soderbergh, there just might be a movie in this after all.