520 Pounds of Cocaine Seized

U.S. customs agents Wednesday seized 520 pounds of cocaine and arrested a California man forced to land at the Santa Paula Airport after his twin-engine plane ran out of gas.

In one of Ventura County’s largest drug busts ever, the 52-year-old pilot was taken into custody in Santa Paula and will be arraigned today in Los Angeles, said John Hensley, the customs special agent in charge. The suspect’s name was not released.

Agents boarded the Cessna Skynight and found 14 duffel bags containing about 240 kilograms of cocaine wrapped in plastic. They also found three loaded guns, officials said.

The pilot was arrested on suspicion of drug smuggling and possession, illegal entry, having an aircraft equipped with smuggling equipment and firearms violations, Hensley said.

Although customs and DEA officials said Wednesday’s arrest did not stem from an ongoing investigation or a tip, they said the suspect is known to both agencies.

Customs agents had been tracking his plane for about 180 miles after their radar in Riverside picked up the aircraft about 7:30 a.m. heading north from Mexico.

Customs spokesman Mike Fleming said the plane aroused suspicion because it was flying at an unusually low altitude--about 150 feet, at least a mile below normal. Agents had received no report that the plane would be entering the U.S., he said. The craft also had no working transponder.

“All of those factors lead you to believe that you might have a potential air-smuggling case,” Fleming said. “When the plane approached the border, it appeared to dive to avoid radar detection.”

A San Diego-based customs plane on routine patrol was dispatched to track and intercept the suspicious craft after it was spotted by a border patrol officer flying low into the U.S. along the western edge of the Laguna Salada, a popular area for drug smuggling near Jacumba in San Diego County.

Hensley said he did not know the man’s starting point or destination, though given the plane’s fuel capacity, he believed it was headed for a less-populated area along the Central Coast.

When the pilot, traveling at 200 mph, failed to land in San Diego or Yuma, Ariz., for customs inspections, federal agents began trailing him with a helicopter, a tracking jet and a jet carrying agents.

They followed him to the small municipal airport in Santa Paula, and warned local police by radio that a suspected smuggler was landing.

When the man landed the plane about 10 a.m., a team of Santa Paula police officers wearing bulletproof vests was waiting on the runway with submachine guns drawn.

“He had run out of gas,” said Bob Czyrklis, a customs agent based in Oxnard. “He maybe expected that he would be able to land, jump out of the plane and run.”

Hensley echoed that theory, saying the suspect had been following a “serpentine, circuitous route.”

“I have no reason to believe that was his final destination based on his flight pattern,” he said.

Over a loudspeaker, Santa Paula Police Chief Walt Adair ordered the pilot to keep his hands up and slowly exit the plane.

“He was very cooperative and complied with all of our demands,” said Officer Michelle Valasco, who searched the pilot and discovered a .22-caliber revolver.

Federal agents who had been trailing the suspect by air then landed.

After two K-9 German shepherds traced drugs inside the plane, the aircraft was searched, Adair said. Strewn on the back seat of the aircraft, officials discovered the 14 nylon black and blue duffel bags filled with 126 brick-like packages wrapped in plastic.

In all, 520 pounds of cocaine, or about 240 kilos, and two semiautomatic handguns were confiscated, Adair and federal agents said.

Hensley said a kilo of cocaine typically sells wholesale in Los Angeles for between $17,000 and $19,000, making Wednesday’s seizure worth more than $4 million. In smaller amounts sold on the street, the value of 240 kilos could reach $25 million.

“It’s the biggest bust I’ve seen here in 18 years,” said Adair, who has been with the Santa Paula department for 31 years.

The seizure appears to be one of Ventura County’s largest ever. In 1989, a Simi Valley case netted 2,100 pounds of cocaine in Los Angeles County. A 1994 bust turned up 1,000 pounds of cocaine and $5.8 million in the case, part of a three-year nationwide money-laundering and drug-trafficking investigation targeting major Colombian cartels.

“This is a pretty good-size load by mid- to late ‘90s standards,” Hensley said.

As agents piled the drugs into a federal truck Wednesday, Adair said he hoped the bust would not cast Santa Paula in a bad light.

“It was sheer happenstance that there happened to have been an airport in Santa Paula when he ran out of gas,” Adair said. “This only indicates how much narcotics are available out there.”