April 6, 1996
The first time Randy Fink got busted for drugs, he quickly lived up to his last name. Fink finked. He spilled enough beans about his fellow smugglers that prosecutors let him sidestep a heavy duty gig in prison.
The feds made him their star witness and squeezed him a cornucopia of confiscated goods: one Collins Avenue condo, one Chevy truck, two Mercedes, one Volvo, four boats, two planes and $53,080 - pocket money found in his trousers when cops handcuffed his wrists. Fink even coughed up an empty lot in Kauai, Hawaii.
Now, 11 year later, a second bust could make his first go round seem like a three-pig luau.
A few weeks ago, an alphabet soup of agents from the DEA, FBI, FDLE and FHP yanked Fink out of his sprawling Biscayne Gardens compound - which served as one of the biggest marijuana hothouses ever uncovered in the United States.
The only one bigger was a pot farm tucked into a mine shaft out West. For his alleged agrarian indiscretion, Fink stands to lose something that makes the confiscated cars, boats and real estate pale by comparison: Freedom. For the rest of his life.
"I guess old habits die hard." Says Myles Malman, a former federal prosecutor who helped bust up the Fink gang the first time in 1985.
"The tragedy is that Fink always had the business acumen to make millions legitimately. If he liked the product so much, he could have just smoked it. He doesn't have to grow 11,000 plants of the stuff."
Malman remembers Fink, now 44, as a big player in South Florida's notorious, rip-snorting drug scene of the 1980s.
Fink ran a successful smuggling outfit, dropping thousands of pounds of marijuana by air, then having speedboats zoom in to scoop up the booty.
"He was one of these very bright young millionaire drug entrepreneurs of the last decade, a true genius of trafficking in marijuana," says Malman.
A change of base
When things got too hot in Miami in 1985, bushy-haired Fink moved his operation to Louisiana. Things blew up later that year when FBI and DEA agents seized a freighter containing more that 25 tons of high-grade Colombian marijuana in the Gulf of Mexico with Fink's prints, figuratively if not literally, all over it.
Among the 23 people arrested with the top dog were three highly decorated Customs agents.
On the first day of the trail, Fink pleaded guilty to reduced charges and agreed to testify against the "dirty cops."
"We needed to rid the government of corrupt law-enforcement officials," says Albert Winters Jr., the prosecutor who put together the plea agreement.
"As far as I'm concerned, they are the worst things going. So we entered into a reasonable bargain with Randy Fink. He was very sharp - and very full of himself. But he did what we needed him to do, and we got rid of the bad guys at Customs."
Fink got a relatively brief sentence and was freed from prison on April 17, 1989, according to federal documents. For most guys, that would have been the end of the story. Prosecutors say it's unusual to see big pot smugglers resurface once they've been through the system. Nothing like a federal prison to set them straight.
Switch to 'fish business'
Fink returned to Miami, Winters got a call from a parole officer in the early 1990s. "They called me about Fink going into the fish business, that's fine with me. I'd like to see him involved in something honest for a change."
Perhaps the fish business stunk. According to a federal affidavit, another fink told the DEA last October that Fink was back into drugs. But this time, said the "concerned citizen" who blabbed, Fink was now in a different end of the business. He was a grower.
Agents snapped into action. They found $2,000 Florida Power & Light bills that showed Fink was burning a suspiciously high amount of electricity behind the eight-foot walls surrounding 170 NE 158th Street.
From a helicopter, agents hovered 600 feet above the compound, peering through a special camera that detects heat. "A portion of the second floor...appeared to be unusually warm," said the DEA's affidavit, suggesting the presence of 1,000-watt light bulbs that pot growers burn 24 hours a day to step up the plants' growing cycle.
At 6:30 a.m. on March 21, Fink and an accomplice woke up to find their compound oozing with cops. They arrested the pair and seized 11,000 plants of sinsemilla - the female pot plant known for it's pistol-packing buds that can fetch more than $4,000 a pod on the street.
"The plants were located throughout the four rooms inside the residence and one trailer," said the DEA press release. "The method of cultivation was hydroponic, which allows growers to use a 15-week cycle" from seedling to full-blown buds. Using high-power lights and liquid nutrient solutions, instead of dirt, agents say. Fink was producing enough buds to make an annual profit of $38 million.
"You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy," says Michael Sheehan, spokesman for the U.S. Customs Service in Miami. "The illegal drug industry is such an alluring and profitable line of work. One might assume with Fink that having experienced the international aspect of the business, he was seeking to stay with domestic activity to avoid agencies like ours. He had his encounter with the U.S. Customs. Maybe that was enough for one lifetime."
Fink is now held on a $100,000 corporate surety bond in the Federal Detention Center downtown. He did not respond to a request for an interview.
John Roth, the Assistant U.S. Attorney handling the case, says Fink faces life in prison if convicted. Property records show the Fink compound belonging to Third Trek Investments Inc., which Roth says is a shell corporation Fink set up. Fink lists his address as a rented mailbox on Biscayne Boulevard.
Not surprised
Not everyone was surprised by the latest arrest.
"Randy Fink is a fink; what else can I say?" says Arthur "Buddy" Lemann, a defense lawyer in the New Orleans case.
"Fink was the government's star witness. He was very glib and well-schooled and a seemingly remorseful kind of guy. Now it turns out he was a con artist all along."
For now, Fink has plenty of free time to ponder his defense. He has finagled his way out of some nasty indictments in the past. Some think he could do it again.
"I suspect," says one lawyer close to the case, "we'll be hearing that he was growing all the pot because he was actually working undercover for the DEA, or that this bust was a government vendetta for not delivering all the testimony he was supposed to as part of the original deal."
Lemann, the Big Easy lawyer, agrees that it's too early to count Randy Fink out for good.
"I'll bet he ends up as a government witness again," says Lemann. "It'll all depend on who Fink can fink on this time around."
Mid-Trial Offer of Probation for Client
