S.D. Man Arrested in Bid to Sell Plane

FBI agents arrested two men--one from San Diego--at Richmond International Airport while they were trying to sell a $250,000 airplane that authorities said was stolen last month in California.

Stuart Oliver Wheeler, 21, of San Diego, and Theodore Melbane Johnson, 58, of Lake Havasu City, Ariz., were charged Thursday with interstate transportation of a stolen aircraft and fraud by wire.

When arrested, the two men were trying to sell the plane--a six-seat 1984 Beechcraft Bonanza B36TC loaded with expensive radio and navigation equipment--to two Maryland businessmen at an airport hangar, the FBI said.

Agents said the plane had been repainted and its identification numbers altered.

FBI agents said a North Carolina man called them Wednesday. The man was considering flying in to Richmond to buy the plane but was leery of the sellers. Had he bought the plane, federal officials said, he probably would have lost both the plane and his money when officials finally caught up with it.

“It’s very seldom we get the opportunity to get in early enough to save somebody money,” said Special Agent Wilber E. Garrett Jr.

The aircraft was reported stolen in Torrance on April 27. The altered identification number on the plane’s tail matched that of a plane in Michigan. An investigation showed the serial numbers also had been changed, federal officials said.

Wheeler and Johnson are to appear before a federal magistrate for a bond hearing Tuesday.