Thursday, March 24, 1988
By STEPHEN J. HEDGES
Herald Staff Writer
It was a slick drug run, the government says, complete with high speed boats, a nighttime drop from an airplane, and — to ensure success — a crooked U.S. Customs Service supervisor.
Eight people went on trial Wednesday on charges that they planned and executed the August 1985 drug drop in the waters off Marathon.
Charles Jordan, who worked for Customs six years and once was the service's Key Largo supervisor, wasn't one of them.
It was Jordan's graft, Assistant U.S. Attorney Myles H. Malman told the federal court jury, that made the drug drop a success.
Jordan, a fugitive, knew where the 5,000 pounds of marijuana would be dropped from a DC-3 and when it would be picked up by swift powerboats, Malman said. He steered his patrol boats clear of the target area, eliminating the smugglers' risk, he added.
"They did it without any fear of law enforcement, without any fear of Custom boats and planes," Malman said. "When there's $1.5 million at stake, there's going to be, unfortunately, corruption."
Most of the defense attorneys chose not to make opening statements Tuesday.
But several said their clients were involved in the case only because they chose the wrong friends.
"Claudio Rodriguez is here for one reason," Anthony Natale said of his client. "When she was 18 and going to beautician school she fell in love with the wrong person."
Natale said Rodriguez was a young, impressionable woman who fell for Dade Frank Sokoloff, another defendant.
Malman says Rodriguez did more than that. He says she checked into a Marathon hotel and watched the comings and goings of patrol boats at a nearby US. Coast Guard station.
Sokoloff's lawyer, Joel Kaplan, told the jury that his client was forced into the drug deal by Randy Fink, who directed a squadron of five drug boats near Marathon. Sokoloff even ran a $150,000 powerboat aground, his lawyer said, because he wanted to foil an Aug, 4, 1985, drug pickup.
"He sabotaged this activity," Kaplan said. "Dade Sokoloff took a pass on the opportunity, as the government has characterized it, to live life in the fast lane in Miami."
Malman said the powerboat ran aground because Sokoloff was an "incompetent" skipper.
Mid-Trial Offer of Probation for Client
