15 More Workers at Miami Airport Held for Suspected Drug Smuggling

1999-09-10 04:00:00 PDT Miami -- Undercover agents, working to bring down a widespread drug-smuggling operation at Miami International Airport, thought that the arrests last month of more than 40 baggage handlers and food service workers on drug charges might impel other suspects at the airport to be more cautious.

Instead, after dodging one bullet, the remaining suspects just assumed they were bulletproof, said federal investigators, who arrested 15 more people yesterday morning and charged them with conspiracy to import cocaine.

Just days after the headline-grabbing arrests on August 25, employees of several contract service companies that provide food, maintenance and baggage handling at the airport were back at work smuggling what they believed to be cocaine -- it was actually fake drugs substituted by undercover agents -- aboard Air Aruba, Bahamas Air and Ecuatoriana flights, federal officials said.

On one flight into Miami International, U.S. Attorney Tom Scott said, a baggage handler took only 23 minutes after touchdown to retrieve what he believed to be a package of cocaine and pass it on to a man waiting at the airport.

"Do any of you get bags in 23 minutes?" Scott asked reporters at a news conference yesterday.

Unfortunately for the baggage handler, he handed the parcel over to an undercover drug agent, Scott said.

It was one of many signs, the investigators said, that their suspects were long on ambition but short on smarts.

Brent Eaton, special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, said one suspect told undercover agents: "Look, don't worry. Everything is business as usual. We're a lot smarter than those guys. They didn't know how to handle these kinds of situations."

Investigators could not resist shaking their heads at the audacity of it.

Even as indictments were being issued in the first round of arrests, "they were still smuggling," said Pat Jones, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs Bureau, another agency involved in the sting operation. It is the second such sting in two weeks that has shown glaring lapses in the airport's security.

The first sting, on August 25, led to the arrests of 58 people, including 30 American Airlines workers, 13 employees with the food contractor LSG/Sky Chefs, a Department of Agriculture inspector, an employee with the Immigration and Naturalization Service and an off-duty employee of the Broward County Sheriff's Department.

They were charged with smuggling what they believed to be small shipments of heroin, hundreds of pounds of cocaine, a loaded pistol and three hand grenades, federal officials said.

The workers arrested in August stashed their illegal cargo in the small packets of coffee served by flight attendants, in wheel compartments, wall panels, luggage bays and, on one plane, inside the wing, federal investigators said.

The smuggling operation came to light two years ago when an American Airlines pilot was accidentally served a mixture of coffee and heroin from a smuggled parcel and complained that his coffee tasted funny.

The smugglers used their identification cards to bypass security at the airport, even on days when they were not scheduled to work, and were never challenged by airport security.