2 Charged With Smuggling Ecstasy Pills on Military Jet
By JULIA PRESTON
Published: April 14, 2005
captain and a master sergeant in the Air National Guard were arrested late Monday on charges that they imported 290,000 Ecstasy pills to New York hidden on a military cargo plane, federal narcotics authorities said yesterday.
Capt. Franklin Rodriguez, 36, is a pilot of the Air Force C-5A Galaxy, a giant cargo plane, and Master Sgt. John Fong, 35, served as a load handler in his crew, according to the criminal complaint. Federal agents said that their arrests broke up a smuggling ring that, using military aircraft, had made at least three earlier flights and moved drugs worth $10 million or more.
Advertisement
On April 8, they made a flight from Stewart Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y., through Germany to the Republic of Georgia to deliver supplies for a training mission there.
On the way back, their plane stopped at a United States military base in Germany. The two guardsmen went to a hotel room near the base and picked up packages containing thousands of tablets of MDMA, the hallucinogenic stimulant nicknamed Ecstasy, according to the authorities. Officials declined to name the base, saying that the investigation by American and German authorities was still under way.
nytimes.com |
