Talk:Black Tuna Gang

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Black Tuna Gang is about the ring of that name, based in Miami, that bought marijuana in Colombia and brought it into the United States from 1974 to 1978: its Colombian supplier, how its shipments travelled, how it was organised in Florida, its prosecution in North Carolina and Miami, and the use of the case in the debate on forfeiture law. The export trade it bought from is covered on Bonanza marimbera.

Sourcing

Who was convicted of what, and the sentences, come from the federal appeals opinions in the case, chiefly United States v. Phillips (Fifth Circuit, 1981), whose account of the facts rests on the evidence at trial; the North Carolina case comes from United States v. Meinster (Fourth Circuit, 1980). The 1984 House of Representatives report on forfeiture is quoted from a dissent in United States v. Monsanto (Second Circuit, 1988). The Drug Enforcement Administration's history of its own work is the agency's account and is attributed to it. Eduardo Sáenz Rovner's 2011 study of Colombian trafficking networks in Miami gives the Colombian side, partly from press reports and from Robert Platshorn's own later account; it is attributed where it differs from the court record. Discuss attribution and any claim that has lost its source here.

Discussion

The name

The sources give three accounts of where the name came from. The Fifth Circuit found that the organisation called itself the "Black Tuna" enterprise, that the phrase was the radio signal Raúl Dávila Jimeno and his associates used for arriving aircraft and for boats meeting his ships, and that Dávila himself was called the Black Tuna. The DEA's history says the gang took its name from the radio code name for Dávila. Sáenz Rovner writes that the authorities named the group ("Las autoridades bautizaron al grupo como la Pandilla Black Tuna"). "Black Tuna Gang" is the form the prosecutor used in closing argument and the DEA's history uses; the court opinions say "Black Tuna enterprise", "group" or "organization".

Number indicted in 1979

Sáenz Rovner gives 14 people indicted by the Miami grand jury on 1 May 1979. The Fifth Circuit describes a superseding indictment naming 12 defendants. The two figures may refer to different indictments.

Meinster's sentence

The Fifth Circuit gives Robert Meinster's aggregate sentence as 53 years, of which 31 were for the continuing-criminal-enterprise count. Sáenz Rovner gives 59 years.

Size of the trade

Three figures exist, none of them independent of the prosecution or the government: a defendant's statement, given in evidence, of more than a million pounds imported between October 1976 and shortly after September 1977; the DEA's 500 tons over 16 months; and a 1984 House of Representatives report's figure of more than a million pounds and about 300 million dollars gross over 16 months.

Payments to the Colombian army

The Fifth Circuit records Platshorn telling a witness that he was held by the military in Colombia on his first trip until Dávila paid 300,000 dollars. Sáenz Rovner describes an arrest on Platshorn's second trip, ended by a payment of 40,000 dollars to the soldiers and a further 35,000 dollars to a naval officer before the plane could leave. These may be different episodes.

Dávila

The DEA's history calls Raúl Dávila Jimeno a sugar grower and says he presented himself as an exporter of sugar, coffee and petroleum; Sáenz Rovner calls him a landowner who grew cotton and coffee and raised cattle. He was indicted with the ring, remained in Colombia and was never tried.

How the ring began

The Fifth Circuit has a Florida dealer, whose source was Dávila, sending marijuana to Meinster in Philadelphia from 1974. Sáenz Rovner has Meinster and Platshorn buying a long ton of Colombian marijuana from a wholesaler in Wisconsin in 1974, while living in Philadelphia.

Image

The DEA's history illustrates the ring's medallions with a small photograph (113 by 149 pixels) of a single medallion. The court describes the medallions as a dark-coloured fish and the DEA as solid gold with a black tuna emblem, so which kind the photograph shows is not settled; the infobox carries no image.