Following a double sweep in Myconos and Thessaloniki yesterday, police achieved the biggest-ever haul of ecstasy tablets in Greece, seizing 100,000 pills and arresting three men, after a sting operation.

In a collaboration between the Drug Squad, the Secret Service and Attica police, officers posing as interested buyers met the unnamed men, two brothers, aged 42 and 39, from Drama and a 39-year-old from Kavala, on the island of Myconos. They arrested the men for possession of 50,000 ecstasy pills, 6 grams of cocaine and a gun.

The men bought and smuggled the drugs from an illegal ecstasy factory in Bulgaria and were planning to sell them in Myconos during the busy summer tourist season, police said.

After questioning, the 42-year-old revealed that more tablets were stashed away in a Thessaloniki apartment, officers said. They found another 50,000 pills after raiding the property, making it the biggest Greek ecstasy haul. The largest number of ecstasy pills previously seized in Greece over an entire year were 83,000 in 2004.