An investor claiming a nearly six million dollar loss in hedge funds of the accused Sarasota Florida Ponzi artist who is also the current owner of flight school Huffman Aviation figured in the story of the St. Petersburg DC9  busted in Mexico's Yucatan with 5.5 tons of cocaine aboard.

Louis D. Paolino, once known as the “Garbage King of New Jersey,” was one of only a handful of entities ever funded by Texas  "investment bank" Argyll Equity LLC,  the major investor in the company whose DC9 was busted on April 11, 2006 in Mexico’s Yucatan, carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine.

Terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta probably never met anyone named “Fat Pete” or “Joey Cakes” while learning to fly  at Huffman Aviation at the Venice Airport.

But ever-mounting evidence points to the conclusion that the men who owned the flight school—both then and now—have more than a passing acquaintance with organized crime.

mar 20, 2009-Another owner of the flight school in Venice Florida that trained Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi to fly is in trouble with the law; current owner Arthur G. Nadel, 75,  was arrested recently for running a Ponzi scheme which methodically looted investors in his Sarasota-based hedge funds of more than $300 million. 

New York tabloids, already in overdrive on the story of Bernard Madoff,  instantly dubbed Nadel Mini-M, for Mini-Madoff.

Nadel's arrest marks the second time in recent years that the owner of Huffman Aviation, the FBO (fixed base of operations) at the Venice Airport has been involved in crimes traditionally associated with the Mob.

Ponzi schemes, of course, are a trademark Mafia specialty. So, too, is the crime of heroin trafficking in which previous owner Wally Hilliard was implicated.

How did city officials in Venice allow the airport's mission-critical FBO to fall into the hands--not once but twice--of people otherwise engaged in organized crime?

Why is it that shadowy underworld figures seem to enjoy the permanent run of the airport in Venice, Florida?

mar 5--09 The owner of the flight school in Venice FL where the two hijackers who crashed airliners into the World Trade Center took flight lessons, was arrested last May after assaulting his 17-yr old step-daughter outside a sports bar in Naples, Florida.

78-year old Wallace J. Hilliard of Naples FL was charged with misdemeanor battery on May 28 2008, according to Collier County, FL arrest records.

In the seven years since 9/11 Wally Hilliard has remained embroiled in controversy. He is currently the subject of  a multi-jurisdictional  fraud investigation into a scheme which may have cost investors as much as $100 million. 

Though no charges have yet been filed, the FBI and investigators from the state of have interviewed numerous witnesses, including over 50 people from Wisconsin who lost millions. They allege Hilliard never alerted investors that he was under investigation, had a federal tax liability going back to 2001,  and had been denied an airline license by the FAA.

Frequent Hilliard “business associate” Tommy Barranza is reportedly under investigation for money laundering for allegedly structuring cash transactions to avoid currency reporting. 

Hilliard is suspected of funneling large amounts of cash to the Bahamas. 

Fort Lauderdale attorney Michael Moulis, described in an article yesterday as “The Man Behind Loophole Air,” is threatening to sue Daniel Hopsicker on behalf of Michael Brassington, the pilot arrested two weeks ago in a 23-count federal indictment for the crash of a corporate jet in New Jersey.

Brassington is also linked to a massive corruption scandal roiling South Florida, over the sale during the past few years of as many as one hundred American-registered planes to Mexico’s dominant Sinaloa Cartel. 

According to a high-ranking DEA official in Miami, a corrupt U.S. Customs operation is to blame. The fact that more people are not aware of these facts owes something to the many forms of intimidation practiced against independent journalists. Such intimidation takes many forms.

Some would say lawsuits, and threats of lawsuits, are one of its milder manifestations. Such people probably haven't been sued for libel recently.  

But attorney Michael Moulis didn’t stop with just offering to sue for libel... 

He threatened criminal prosecution in Federal Court.  
 

Less than a year before the Teterboro crash of a Challenger corporate jet that ran off a runway and hurtled into traffic on a busy 6-lane highway on Feb 2 2005,  the company responsible for that crash, Platinum Jet Management of Fort Lauderdale,  ran a private jet off a runway at Peachtree-DeKalb Airport in Atlanta.

The Teterboro crash was so spectacular that it led all three evening newscasts. The crash sparked a federal criminal investigation that led to the recent 23-count indictment against Brassington, and four other executives of Platinum Jet Management.

The investigation turned up damning evidence of a pattern of illegal activity on the part of the charter company so egregious that the responsible Federal agency, the FAA, came under rare criticism from another Federal agency, the NTSB.

Former inspector general Mary Schiavo of the U.S. Department of Transportation calls Brassington’s charter company  "Loophole Airlines."  Schiavo, an outspoken critic of the nation's aviation regulators, told the NJ Star-Ledger that the company that flew the jet was an unqualified charter operator, flying U.S. skies only by circumventing federal regulations. 

"This is rampant. It isn't just one operator. This goes on everywhere in every part of the country," she charged.  "They are loophole airlines." 

If Schiavo is right,  then the man behind "Loophole Air" is Fort Lauderdale attorney Michael Moulis, a former FAA prosecutor who has represented Guyanese pilot Brassington since the Teterboro Challenger crash four years ago, 

The pilot arrested two weeks ago on felony charges in the crash in the February 2005 crash of a Challenger business jet at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey has since been flying illegal charters for the Premier of the Turks & Caicos in luxury Gulfstream III jets owned by a Washington lobbyist and former aide to President Bill Clinton.

Testimony at the British Commission of Inquiry Turks & Caicos Islands corruption probe last week revealed that Guyanese pilot Michael Brassington, currently facing a 23-count indictment in Federal Court in Newark for endangering passengers lives at charter company Platinum Jet Management, is in  business with former Clinton White House aide Jeffrey Watson, now a Washington lobbyist.

The Commission heard that Brassington and Turks & Caicos Premier Michael Misick conspired to induce the island's government to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to Watson to lease two high-end Gulfstream III luxury business jets.

The men engineered an air charter deal that paid Watson more than $160,000-a-month from the coffers of the Turks & Caicos' nearly-bankrupt  government, which was at the same time eliminating all student scholarships.

Watson  is a former housing official in Miami who became a Clinton White House Aide, responsible for doling out $75 million in Federal government largesse after the devastation of Hurricane Andrew.

The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel called him “Florida's insider at the White House.”

3Four years after the  spectacular crash of a business jet at Teterboro Airport across the Hudson River from New York City  injured 20 people and left one man with permanent brain damage,  the owner and chief pilot who was arrested on felony charges in the crash last week was also named as a key figure in a corruption probe in the Turks & Caicos Islands.

Even as FBI agents were arresting him in the New Jersey crash and charging him in a 23-count indictment in which he stands accused of compromising passenger safety, former Guyanese military pilot Michael Francis Brassington was making headlines in a Watergate-like British Commission of Inquiry investigating allegations of corruption in office against Michael Misick, Premier of the Turks & Caicos Islands.

On the Challenger flight that crashed, more than 20 people were injured. Authorities expressed amazement that nobody was killed. According to the NTSB, neither the pilot nor the co-pilot were rated to fly the flight they were flying. The flight attendant was a dancer at the Voodoo Lounge in Miami.

A month later the FAA shut Brassington's Platinum Jet charter company down. It didn't faze Brassington. He just changed the name of his company and kept on hauling.

And, for the next four years, that was that.

35-year old Guyanese pilot Michael Francis Brassington was indicted in New Jersey federal court this week,  the result of an investigation into the spectacular crash of a  airplane outside New York City in February of 2005, which injured 20 people and provoked widespread outrage in New York.  

Brassington, the principal owner of defunct air charter company Platinum Jet Management, was  indicted Wednesday along with four other company executives, charged with recklessly endangering the lives of passengers.  He has survived previous scrapes with American law enforcement, each time emerging curiously unscathed.

However, his earlier controversies were not celebrity-enhanced.

He first achieved notoriety and became a footnote to the history of the 9.11 attack as the co-pilot of a Lear jet(N351WB) which was busted carrying 43 lbs of heroin in Orlando on July 22, 2000. The Lear jet’s owner was Wallace J. Hilliard, the secretive 75-year old Naples FL financier whose Huffman Aviation flight school in Venice just three weeks earlier had enrolled soon-to-be-famous terrorist pilot trainees Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi.

Less well-known about Brassington's history of brushes with U.S. law enforcement is that several years ago he was the subject of a Multi-Agency Federal Task Force, Operation Blue Lightning; Brassington was suspected of trafficking drugs, passports, people, currency, and diamonds  into the U.S. through two airports in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Tasked with tracking Brassington's movements during Operation Blue Lightning, a Customs Supervisor in Miami had even warned Customs Agents at Fort Lauderdale International Airport to treat Brassington as a "grave threat to national security.”

Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire whose $250 million cash infusion bailed the New York Times out of a tight cash crunch last week, has long-standing business ties with wealthy Mexican businessmen suspected of involvement in Mexico's so-called “Cartel of the Southeast,” the drug trafficking organization (DTO) based in Cancun which came to light two years ago with the crash on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula of an American-registered (N987SA) Gulfstream jet carrying nearly four tons of cocaine.
 

A long-time lieutenant of Carlos Slim's, Fernando Chico Pardo, left Slim's employ to take over ASUR, a publicly-traded corporation which observers accuse of moving large quantities of cocaine through Cancun International Airport, which the company runs and manages. Slim's big investment represents an encroachment into the ownership of an icon of American democracy of a man, and a massive fortune, whose provenance have gone largely unexamined.
 

But on the topic of Slim's shady dealings, all eyes seem to be curiously averted. However it seems highly doubtful the Times' ownership is unaware of them. The barely-concealed facts regarding Carlos Slim’s shady connections are well-known to journalists in Mexico.

They deserve to become more well-known here in the U.S.; the links between Mexico's exploding narco-economy and current-world's-richest-man Carlos Slim don’t end with Fernando Pardo's ASUR. 

Two of the four prominent Chavezistas charged with illegally acting on Hugo Chavez’s behalf in the recently-concluded Suitcase-Gate Trial in Miami were inside players in a previous Venezuelan scandal that took place well before Chavez ever took office, the  MadCowMorningNews has learned.

The Suitcase-Gate Trial was supposed to spotlight a criminal Venezuelan elite of Castro-loving Chavezistas, who taunt America, threaten war with Colombia, and give sanctuary to Hezbollah. 

Instead, testimony showed that Chavez's Venezuelan cronies are anything but wild-eyed radicals. The vanguard of the working class drives Ferraris and lives in McMansions in Miami, and is too busy making money, in oil, real estate, and weapons and narcotics to wear masks over their faces, or raspberry-red berets

Neither man has built a better mousetrap, or done anything more clever than align themselves with a Venezuelan elite which resembles the vanguard of the working class much less than it does a kleptocracy very much like the one which has just looted trillions of dollars from the American economy. 

At least two of the four defendants convicted of working as illegal foreign agents in Florida for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in the Suitcase-Gate Scandal had ties to an international criminal organization which was operating successfully in Venezuela, and with seeming official impunity, long before Chavez himself came to power, The MadCowMorningNews has learned.

Both the recently-convicted Franklin Duran, and Carlos Kauffmann, who pled guilty before the trial, took part in a $7 billion bank scandal during the mid-1990's that involved insiders looting Venezuelan banks, and led more than 200 Venezuelan bankers to flee Caracas for exile in Miami.

When a U.S. jury in Miami recently convicted Venezuelan businessman Franklin Duran in the Suitcase-Gate Trial, the verdict raised more questions than it answered.

From the start, observers saw the purpose of the prosecution as being to embarrass and point a finger at corruption in the government of Venezuela's current President (and Bush Administration bete noire) Hugo Chavez.

But while Chavez's "Bolivarian revolution" was singled out by Bush Administration prosecutors, the men acting on Chavez's behalf have connections which have so far been ignored to scandals which occurred under past Venezuelan Presidents as well.

The CIA Drug Plane Scandal grew exponentially last week when European Union officials broke an official 40-year-long silence on the previously-taboo subject of the CIA's worldwide involvement in drug trafficking.

Last week Mexico City newspaper El Universal reported that The European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation has begun an investigation one of the planes, the cocaine-laden Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA), for suspected use in CIA "rendition" flights in which prisoners are covertly transferred to a third country or US-run detention centers.

Neither of the federal agencies with apparent jurisdiction—the DEA and FAA—has so far offered answers about how two American-registered jets with extremely politically well-connected owners, could have wound up carrying so much Colombian coke. But then, no mainstream American journalists have bothered to ask.

Mexican journalists have not been that timid…

Last week, two wire services, Agence France Presse and the Associated Press, reported news that readers of the investigative reporting at this website have known about for almost a year.

While happy to see the mainstream media waking up, a little "credit where credit is due" would be nice, too. We broke this news on this website eleven months ago (Oct 8, 2007). When not unsuccessfully attempting to debunk it, America's corporate media has assiduously ignored my reporting on a whole host of scoops we've broken.

Ultimately, the effort is designed to make me go away, for the same reason that stories about 9/11 "conspiracies" never mention real investigative reporting on 9/11, which, alas, appears in very few places. And, in combination with a series of nuisance libel lawsuits, it has almost succeeded.

You can make the difference in keeping the news real by putting your money where your mouth is. Please send advice, and donations, and pre-order both the book and DVD.

A sincere and heartfelt thank you to all the Mad Cow readers who have been supportive over these past years...

Straight from the front lines of the Drug War…

"The NEW American Drug Lords" is a no-holes-barred look at into the Biggest Taboo story of our time: the illegal drug trade.

The documentary pulls back the curtain on the biggest drug story of our time: the scandal which erupted when two drug planes flying tons of cocaine were busted in Mexico's Yucatan enroute from Colombia to Fort Lauderdale in Florida.

Both were American-owned. Recent owners of the first plane busted—a DC9 with 5.5 tons of cocaine—have interlocking business partnerships with recent owners of the second plane, a Gulfstream II business jet.

The Gulfstream had been previously used to fly for the CIA. The DC9 was painted like an official aircraft from the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security.

The New American Drug Lords. Meet them. Know them.

Beat them at their own game.

VIEW IT HERE…

As the political conventions dominate our consciousness, remember that a major international trafficking operation, like this one, kicks off vast amounts of fungible cash, day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year...

If there is an arena where the a battle is being waged for the "soul of America," as Joe Biden suggested last week... it is here.

The exclusive "Cocaine One" series of investigative reports by this reporter appearing on this website for the past two years made the news, finally... not in the U.S., but in Mexico City, where it was cited by a principal in the drug trafficking scandal in newspaper interviews to support his allegation of selective prosecution against the DEA.

Carlos Gutiérrez de Velasco is the paterfamilias of the influential Veracruz-based family which owned the Casa de Cambio Puebla currency exchange, accused of laundering enough drug money through U.S. banks to buy as many as 100 American planes for use in drug-running.