Posted on 02/22/2006 7:34:15 PM PST by snowsislander
Airdate: November 27, 2001
Senior Correspondent Ike Seamans
POSTED: 12:34 p.m. EST March 21, 2002
UPDATED: 5:37 p.m. EST March 26, 2002
MIAMI -- They are ordinary people, getting rich beyond their dreams smuggling tons of drugs into South Florida. Only these are the last people and the last places you'd ever expect to be able to get away with it.
For five months, NBC 6 and Senior Correspondent Ike Seamans have been investigating how some very public places, owned by local government, have become the biggest drug smuggling sites in South Florida.
The Port of Miami and Broward's Port Everglades world famous for pleasure cruises and cargo commerce - have each become a port of crime. Drug smuggling of such staggering proportions, done right under the nose of supposed tight security. But the real shocker is who law enforcement finds doing most of the smuggling.
A war on South Florida's waterfront.
"It could be hash, it could be marijuana, it could be cocaine, it could be heroin." A grueling, daily assault by U.S. customs to find drugs smuggled through the sprawling Port of Miami. The nation's number one port for cruise ships. It's also the nation's top drug smuggling seaport. Most of the drugs coming into South Florida come in through the Port of Miami and Port Everglades.
On ships, smugglers could hide drugs everywhere in containers, stacked like small buildings on the deck.
"It's impossible for me to be everywhere. It's impossible for me to have a team with me all the time," says Customs Canine Officer Patricia McCurdy.
So little time, so many drugs. Customs inspectors searching all over the port, even checking poisonous animal hides. But they can examine just a fraction of the more the 200,000 containers that arrive at the port every year.
NBC 6's five-month investigation uncovered it's easy to smuggle drugs through the port. Law enforcement says it's because of internal conspiracies, many of the people who work there are the ones doing the smuggling.South Florida's Customs Chief Frank Figueroa.
"Anyone who has access to the Port of Miami could be a player in a conspiracy scheme." One of the biggest players is a man - a former Longshoreman who worked on the docks, an admitted drug smuggler. Now, he is a DEA informant, who knows all about internal conspiracies. He is speaking publicly for the first time. His identity was kept hidden because the DEA says he's in danger of being killed.
"If a Longshoreman don't do it, the truck driver will do it. If the truck driver don't do it, the mechanics will do it. If the mechanics don't do it, the stevedores will try to do it. And that's what's happening at the Port of Miami. Everyone is trying to get involved because of the pie. The pie is real good to everyone!"
He says he never earned more than $80,000 a year as a dockworker, but says he made millions smuggling drugs through the port. He bought diamond rings, gold bracelets, and had a lavish lifestyle.
"These are people who work, who have nominal jobs on the port, wind up having all kinds of assets that are inconsistent with their income," says Frank Figueroa, Special Agent in charge.
"I was responsible for at least 200 million in cocaine, smuggled through the Port of Miami."
The informant tells Investigative Producer Scott Zamost he moved tons of cocaine and marijuana over the last eight years, both at the Port of Miami and Port Everglades.
"I said I was a professor in the drugs. I had more ways of getting it off the Port of Miami than anyone I think!"
The DEA's Mark Minelli says it's rare for an insider to talk about internal conspiracies at the port in such detail."Nobody has ever been willing to come forward because nobody has been in the lion's mouth we call it," says Minelli.
At the port, the self-proclaimed professor of drugs says, many workers are involved in internal conspiracies. Like these dockworkers who were caught on hidden camera by customs removing drugs from a container.
Florida drug czar Jim McDonough:
Question: "Is this an internal conspiracy?"
"By and large most of the drug smuggling is internal," says McDonough.
Question: "So we're talking about Port employees, longshoremen, maybe teamsters, maybe security guards, all this type of people?"
"All of the above."
"There is dockworkers that are involved, and we are trying to put a stop to it, but it's very difficult to show knowledge," says Tim O'Connor, a customs supervisor.
And potentially very dangerous, earlier this year, this surveillance tape obtained by NBC 6 shows a container filled with marijuana dropped near customs inspectors.
"I don't think the person dropping it intentionally to scare us. I don't think anyone would be that foolish."
In another container
"They obviously cut the bolt"
Evidence that someone tampered with the lock. Boxes of garlic inside cover up marijuana. 39 burlap bags. 32 hundred pounds of marijuana. At Port Everglad similar problems. Inspectors found 1,800 pounds of marijuana hidden in a false bottom in an empty container. Customs suspects another internal conspiracy."The people that actually run the yards, run the containers around, you get your information from them."
Then, the self-proclaimed professor of drugs says, he simply drove the container filled with drugs to a secluded area like this, where it was quickly unloaded by fellow dockworkers and stashed in a van.
"Once we get there with the container everyone is out to do it in 15 minutes. 15 minutes everything is over."
Then the van was then easily driven off the port.
"If they stopped me I just show my I.D., and drive off with no questions asked!" "No customs, no nobody, no security, no one asking you any questions."
The Port of Miami's main gate - a typical weekday afternoon. No one asked NBC 6 Senior Correspondent Ike Seamans who he was, or for any I.D.
It was the same kind of access the DEA's star informant told NBC 6 he had while smuggling drugs working as a dockworker at the port.No one stopped our NBC 6 crew. No one checked us when we left.
NBC 6 informed Port Director Charles Towsley.
"That shouldn't happen. That's a mistake. That's a people mistake and when those things happen it needs to be brought to my attention to get action taken and it's the first time I've heard that Ike," says Towsley.
Easy access to the port is not the only problem that concerns law enforcement. They're also alarmed that many of the people who work there have criminal records.
NBC 6 checked more than 1,300 members of the three major Longshoremens' unions listed in port records. We found nearly one in five are convicted felons in Florida. Their offenses include: attempted murder, armed robbery, assault and battery, trafficking in cocaine, grand theft, auto theft, and sex with a child. Despite a county law with strict guidelines on hiring convicted felons, nearly half who appeal to a special panel to work at the port are approved.
"From our standpoint, what benefit would it do to kick him out on the street? We see none," says Khalid Salahuddin, Deputy Port Director.
But this state report on port security charges the Port of Miami with "leniency" in allowing "convicted felons" to work on the port.
"I think we have to be very prudent about who we put in the hen-house. We generally don't put the wolf in the hen-house, based on the promise that reform has taken place," says Jim McDonough, Florida Drug Control Director.
Neil Flaxman, Attorney for the International Longshoremens' Association, says, "it's not putting the fox in the hen-house. The fox already has done his time or her time, been paroled and declared not a danger to society, allowed back in society." Question: "so there's a correlation between the kind of people working on the port and how much drugs are coming through?"
"Yes," says Jim McDonough, Florida Drug Control Director.
"I'm saying it's isolated among bad individuals, and not because they're in the ILA or not because they're members of the ILA. It's because they're bad individuals. period." Not according to the self-proclaimed professor of drugs, himself a convicted felon, who was a member of the ILA.
"Out of 100 ILA, 95 percent are actually dirty into drugs."
"To say 95 percent of these people are somehow involved in some illegal conspiracy and customs, police not knowing who these people are is incredible. It's just not believable." Believable or not, the professor of drugs says, there are already people taking his place, smuggling drugs right now through the Port of Miami.
"Once you leave, there is someone there to always follow your footsteps, once you get a piece of that pie, it's hard to turn away. That's how life is out there."
But -- but -- the Coast Guard will protect us in the event that anybody on the inside goes astray.
What is the easiest way to smuggle WMDs into America?
Hide it in a cargo of cocaine.
As I said earlier, the Colombian cartels are going to be pissed off at the thought of giving up control of Port of Miami to the Arabs.
And the lure of big money can make almost anyone a willing conspirator. How can we possibly cure this situation?
I would laugh, but sadly it is true.
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