In one of the biggest organized crime busts since Prohibition, Oak Harbor’s shadowy Dutch Mafia was taken down in a hail of old Kleenex and stale coffee Monday night.

A task force made up of Oak Harbor police, Island County Sheriff’s deputies and disgruntled Irishmen brought down the hammer after years of undercover investigation in the city’s seedy tulip district.

“It will not be swept into a wooden shoe this time,” Sheriff Mark Vanderbrown said.

The officers infiltrated the Holland-based syndicate’s coffee klatch beneath the City Beach Park windmill and discovered a room filled with grown men and women decked out in old-timey Dutch costumes, sharing oliebollen and funny stories about old friends.

Several of the octogenarians made a break for it, but didn’t get far before their Klompen cracked open.

Vanderbrown said the investigation was hampered by the fact that even expert linguists couldn’t decipher the suspects’ thick accents or figure out how to correctly pronounce “Freund” and “Fakkema.”

The members of the Dutch Mafia are accused of secretly running the government, all the businesses and some of the parades on North Whidbey through “a suspicious level” of hard work and thriftiness, according to a rival member of the Irish Wildlife Society.

Twenty members of the Dutch Mafia were booked into Oak Harbor jail on misdemeanor racketeering charges. Judge Vickie Van Churchill set bail at three tulip bulbs and “one of those adorable mini-Klompens” each.

APRIL FOOLS!