Feds describe how Miami contract pilot got caught trafficking cocaine

MIAMI – A Miami contract pilot known as “Jagger” flew a private jet registered in the U.S. from the Dominican Republic to Venezuela where he expected men to load about 1,700 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia.

Rupert Bazil De Las Casas, the pilot, planned to fly from Venezuela to Honduras to unload the cocaine, so traffickers could pack it into trucks to travel to Mexico and the U.S.

The plan to fly to Honduras and then to Mexico fell apart. De Las Casas, and Ronier Sanchez, his co-pilot from Naucalpan, Mexico, crash-landed just short of a landing strip in Venezuela.

According to federal prosecutors, De Las Casas, Sanchez, and a third man “evaded capture by Venezuelan authorities, and the cocaine was diverted back to Colombia.”

Records show that’s how DEA agents described Aug. 6, 2016, as a cocaine trafficking conspiracy that prompted a grand jury to indict De Las Casas and Sanchez on Dec. 14, 2016.

De Las Casas was arrested on April 15, 2017, he pleaded guilty on Oct. 23, 2019, and U.S. District Judge Alvin W. Thompson sentenced him on May 30 and June 2 for his participation in two separate cocaine trafficking conspiracies to about 85 months in prison with time already served, and three years of supervised release

Sanchez was arrested in Asuncion, Paraguay, on March 25, 2021, he pleaded guilty on Dec. 20, 2023, and Thompson sentenced him to 48 months in prison on Dec. 23, 2023, over a charge of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine on board an aircraft registered in the U.S.