Museum piece sold for cheap is the real deal

We’ve all heard about bargain hunters traveling the country or folks on the internet looking for one big deal.  Little do they know the aircraft business is full of golden opportunities, just ask Mexican drug trafficking organizations (DTO).

This is the story of a plane deal where a transnational criminal organization found a 40-year-old Gulfstream G-1159 jet, N311BD for cheap in the United States and could have made mega millions like they’ve done many times buying planes in the U.S.

Between December 2019 and January 2020, a Mexican DTO got a Gulfstream jet for pennies from a museum.  Coincidentally, the museum got the jet from a Discovery and Flight Center (museum) and by the time the traffickers got it, it hadn’t operated for at least four years and had been sitting in the desert in California.

Oh wait, there’s another coincidence… the buyer on the bill of sale submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration was a convicted drug smuggler, nothing to see here, I guess.  So, the convicted drug smuggler takes possession of the aircraft, gets it started and off it flies to Mexico.

In less than two months the jet takes off from Mexico, lands on a dirt strip in Venezuela in the middle of the night, onloads a large amount of cocaine and takes off.  After clearing Venezuelan airspace, it heads into the Caribbean at breakneck speed with the transponder turned off, so no other aircraft know it’s inflight.

After a few hours the jet lands on a dirt and sand strip in Belize almost at daybreak.  Belize authorities were in the area and made it to the landing site before the cargo could be offloaded and disappear into the jungle of Belize.

This was Belize’s biggest cocaine seizure of just a little over 2300kgs (about 5070.63 lb) of cocaine worth an estimated $58 million dollars.

Literally pennies to $58 million for an old museum jet.  And that’s the deal!

Read the AGC Indictment