http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2008-06-19/news/smoked-tuna-in-the-can/full
He was the first big bust of the War on Drugs. That and two bits
won't get you a cup of coffee.
By Brantley Hargrove
Published on June 19, 2008
Robert Platshorn was a hostage, all right, but you wouldn't have
known it from the lush Caribbean scenery outside his hotel window.
You wouldn't have figured it from his carefree fishing excursions for
marlin and sailfish on luxury yachts or from the big fat joints of
Colombia's finest marijuana that continually protruded from his
lips.But a hostage he was, human collateral for a two-and-half-ton
load of Santa Marta Gold that was slowly making its way up Colombia's
Rio Magdalena on a large wooden raft called a bungo. Its destination:
South Florida. Its value: $1.4 million, minus the $30,000 in bad drug
debts this load was supposed to cover, the $300,000 to be paid to the
Colombian supplier, and the $200,000 for transportation. And until
Platshorn's cohorts took possession of the marijuana and a bank
transaction was completed, a captive Platshorn remained comfortably
ensconced in an opulent suite at a hotel on Colombia's Caribbean coast.
His partners were supposed to fly the load back to Florida in the
cargo hold of a DC-3, a reliable old plane that made its name
carrying supplies and troops during World War II. Then, once all of
the pot was sold and the money was deposited in an account, his
"captors" would release him.
Platshorn wasn't worried. Stoned, yes thoroughly baked, in fact,
and intimately acquainted with the goods he was soon to transport
but not worried.
This was just business, and good business wasn't violent, not in the
mid-1970s, when Platshorn ran his transcontinental racket. Marijuana
suppliers were family-run enterprises mediated by political figures
and local law enforcement intent on keeping a lid on the trade while
lining their own pockets. And he trusted his partners. They were his
stoner buddies, and he knew they'd come through for him.
"It was a hippie era," Platshorn says. "You tell a guy you'll pay
him $1 million, you pay him."
Those were the years before the cocaine blizzard swallowed South
Florida, and Platshorn was just an entrepreneurial pothead leading
the 007 existence he'd always dreamed of and smoking some really
good weed while he was at it.
Back in Florida, he had a handful of yachts at his disposal. From a
posh suite at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, he operated an
auto auction, a marina club, and a barbershop. He used canal-front
stash houses and wore stylish plaid leisure suits with the broad
collars as sharp as spearheads.
The real cash cow, of course, wasn't the barbershop or the auction.
It was the Santa Marta Gold the finest grass coming into South Florida.
The plan all along was to make $1 million smuggling the stuff, then
get out while the gettin' was good. But like most best-laid plans
and that ill-fated load drifting up the Rio Magdalena nothing ever
goes the way it's supposed to.
When shipments of marijuana landed at clandestine jungle airstrips or
a yacht rendezvoused with a mothership on the open sea, DEA agents
frequently heard the code name "black tuna" crackle over the radio.
Platshorn didn't choose the sobriquet. It was the DEA that dubbed
his ragtag group of stoners the Black Tuna Gang. And soon, the Tunas
and Platshorn himself would become legendary figures in
drug-smuggling lore.
Platshorn and friends would be accused of smuggling, or at least
attempting to smuggle, 500 tons of marijuana into the United States
during the mid- to late '70s. When they were busted in September
1978, the DEA proclaimed it the most sophisticated drug ring it had
ever encountered.
Platshorn's 1980 conviction was a major coup for drug enforcement
agencies, the first-ever joint FBI/DEA enterprise. In all, eight of
the gang's central members were convicted in two federal trials, but
the gang's leaders, Platshorn and Robert Meinster, would pay the
stiffest price: prison sentences totaling 108 years between them.
On April Fool's Day of this year, Platshorn was released to a halfway
house in West Palm Beach after 28 years in the pen. He has absolutely
nothing to show for his stint as one of America's most wanted
smugglers: no money, no job, little remaining family. A benefit
concert for Platshorn, sponsored by High Times, hasn't been able to
secure a venue, and a book he wrote in prison on an old typewriter,
The Black Tuna Diaries, hasn't been picked up by a publisher.
But there is the Black Tuna myth, and Platshorn is eager to peddle
it. He told his story to New Times – about the good ol' days of
trafficking and how it went so terribly wrong. Through interviews
with DEA agents, academics, and attorneys involved in the two trials
that sank the Black Tuna Gang and after scrutinizing hundreds of
pages of court documents, old newspaper articles, and Platshorn's
manuscript, an image of "Bobby Tuna" began to emerge from the smoke
and coke-lined mirrors of three decades of drug enforcement.
Platshorn might have been a hippie at heart, but the traffickers who
replaced him were a far more ruthless breed. Through their
innovations in large-scale smuggling, the Black Tunas unwittingly
paved the way for today's vicious drug game and the law enforcement
practices that paradoxically fuel it.
The feds couldn't have realized that shutting down the Black Tuna
Gang would set in motion even more sophisticated, powerful, and
cutthroat drug organizations. In retrospect, smugglers like the Tunas
would appear quaint and almost romantic compared to the highly
organized Colombian cartels. "To me, Robert Platshorn represents a
kind of outlaw culture most people identify with the Wild West," says
David Bienenstock, a High Times co-editor who wrote a story about
Platshorn in 2004. "Now, most of the marijuana in America is
homegrown, and most smuggling involves hard drugs. Remember, the War
on Drugs created the drug cartels, not the other way around."
The difference between the Black Tunas and the cartels was one of
scale: The Tunas were just one link in a supply chain feeding the
American stoner. They saw none of the grossly inflated profits from
the street and had no part in production.
The cocaine overlords, however, had an incentive to organize. With a
product worth ten times more than pot and with an escalating War on
Drugs, the cartels became more like streamlined multinational
corporations. They had their own security forces, advanced
money-laundering systems, large-scale processing laboratories, and,
most important, their own street-level distribution networks, making
them a model of vertical integration.
Credit Platshorn and the Tunas for teaching a valuable lesson to this
new breed of supplier/smuggler: Why risk a skunky-smelling boatload
of pot when a scentless duffle bag of coke is much more discreet and
much more valuable? By taking down the Tunas and those who followed
them, the DEA forced the market to adapt. It created a climate in
which cocaine was the top commodity a commodity so lucrative that
its revenues fueled the explosion of high-rises that still pierce the
Miami skyline.
"It was the beginning of fundamental changes in trafficking routes
and in forms of gang organization," says Dr. Bruce Bagley, a
University of Miami professor and expert in U.S.-Latin American
relations and drug trafficking.
Platshorn might not have foreseen the level of profits and carnage
that would come to characterize the illegal drug trade, but he had a
gut feeling. To him, coke was "bad karma." It was a substance people
got shot over. He was a stoner, plain and simple, a hippie who wanted
no part of the negative vibes associated with the increasingly
proliferating powder and those who trafficked in it.
Goods worth their weight in gold incite violence. But plentiful grass
at $60 a pound? Come on. That was just a party. It was definitely not
something that would land you a 64-year prison sentence.
The scrape of silverware against ceramic plates and the din of more
than 20 voices fill the dining room at the Center of Hope in West
Palm Beach. At a nearby table, a father asks his adult son, a
resident, how much he's making flipping burgers. And that's how they
start after being disgorged from a Florida federal prison at the
bottom of the food chain.
There are rules here at the Center of Hope. Residents are not allowed
to own cell phones. They aren't allowed to leave without written
approval. They can't leave until gainful employment is found.
Remaining free is contingent upon following the rules.
After nearly three decades in prison, structure and rule are
imprinted on Platshorn's brain. He frets about being late from
pre-approved jaunts or staying on a collect call long enough to annoy
his supervisors. He raises his voice over the muddled roar of the
dining room and leans in. The silver-haired former smuggler wants to
talk about his wild days. He speaks quickly and clearly, his Philly
patois slightly altered by a few missing front teeth. He's
self-conscious about it and talks about getting his teeth fixed as
soon as he has the money.
Yet when he talks about a smuggle, a near miss, being one step ahead
of the feds, his eyebrows go up and his face comes alive the way it
did when he was a pitchman selling newfangled contraptions to
passersby on the Atlantic City boardwalk. Each turn of phrase is
practiced, crafted through long hours behind prison walls. The price
he paid, his "debt to society," hasn't quashed his nostalgia for the
good ol' days.
Platshorn is 64 now. On the day of his release, he wore 22-year-old
gray sweats. His hair was almost completely gray. But none of the
indignities of age and hard time have erased the boss man in him. He
complains that New Times didn't provide him with nearly 30-year-old
newspaper clippings quickly enough. He orders a reporter to bring
filterless Pall Malls and lobster bisque to the halfway house.
The genesis of the Black Tuna Gang can be traced back to a dusty day
in August 1974 at the Wisconsin State Fair near Milwaukee. Platshorn
was a pitchman the guy in a white smock demonstrating how well
contraptions like Remington Electric Knives, Dial-O-Matic Blenders,
No-Run Hosiery, or electric toothbrushes worked, dazzling crowds with
his gift of gab.
"He had finesse. He wasn't a barker," says Jerry Crowley, 71, who
pitched with Platshorn from the beginning. "When he pitched the
Vita-Mix, you thought you were going to die if you didn't buy one."
"Put 500 people in front of me," Platshorn likes to say, "and I'd get
into 300 pockets."
Things were going well for him: He was married and had a son on the
way, as well as a few successful businesses. Born in Philadelphia,
Platshorn graduated from high school in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He
studied communications and journalism at Temple University and at the
University of Miami, but he never graduated. He was a smart
middle-class kid with a restless soul. Unlike many who entered the
drug trade, he wasn't clawing his way out of poverty; he was just a
natural-born salesman and entrepreneur.
At the state fair, he met an old acquaintance from Philadelphia who
was looking for some buyers to offload several shipments of
marijuana. And so it began for Platshorn, who got a little dough for
referring a contact to Robby Meinster, his childhood buddy.
(Meinster, who lives in Pennsylvania now, declined to be interviewed.)
Richard Nixon was out of the White House by then, and the prevailing
attitudes toward pot suggested to Platshorn that legalization was
just up the road. There was an opening for profits, but he had to
move fast. Besides, moving marijuana was so much more exciting than
hustling No-Run Hosiery.
In 1975, Platshorn moved to Miami and began ascending the
pot-purveying hierarchy, establishing Miami-Cuba connections as a
middleman. These Cuban connections would later be severed as the
Colombians violently wrested control of the cocaine trade.
Platshorn lived in the Spring Gardens section of old Miami, on the
Seybold Canal. In spring 1976, he and Meinster opened the South
Florida Auto Auction on seven acres at 2979 NW 36th St. Meinster
relocated to Miami, and business began moving on all fronts. When
Platshorn went to Barranquilla, Colombia, to salvage a failed deal
that his weed-hustling customers' money depended on, he met "Johnny."
Platshorn needed a load of pot on credit, and Johnny knew just the
right people. Johnny introduced him to Raúl Dávila-Jimeno. The
Associated Press later described him as "dark-eyed and handsome," a
man who "never [moved] without his local militiamen or his
silver-plated .357 Magnum beneath an expensive leisure suit." From a
prominent Colombian family, he was the only one from his country
charged in the Black Tuna case. He was never extradited to the United
States to face those charges.
The deal gelled, and Platshorn established a good working
relationship with Dávila. For his second load from the wealthy
Colombian, Platshorn arranged for 5,000 pounds of some "primo
Colombian yerba." As collateral, Platshorn offered himself. He'd be
released as soon as the load was sold and payment was deposited in an account.
It was in the fall of 1976, after an almost three-week stay in El
Rodadero de Santa Marta on Colombia's Caribbean coast as a "hostage,"
that Platshorn finally rendezvoused in Aruba with a couple of pilots
and the DC-3. They flew to a clandestine airstrip near the Caribbean
coast in La Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta, jokingly referred to as
O'Hare South, and took on the load.
But as they prepared to leave, Colombian soldiers began filtering out
of the jungle shouting "¡Tranquilo, hombres!" which, roughly
translated, means "Don't move, stay calm, and put your hands above your heads!"
The soldiers glanced nervously at the glinting pistol stuck in
Dávila's waistband and began disarming everyone. The noon sun glared
high overhead, and Platshorn was wilting in the oppressive humidity.
The soldiers pointed to the far end of the runway to the man in
charge. He was a lieutenant, dressed in olive-drab fatigues, with two
Dobermans on a leash in one hand and a chrome automatic in the other.
When he finally joined them, the lieutenant asked Platshorn if he was
the boss. Platshorn said he was just a laborer: "Yo campesino solo."
The Colombian officer didn't buy any of it. So he ordered Platshorn,
laborer that he was, to begin unloading five tons of Colombia's
skunkiest, one fecund 50-pound bale at a time. Platshorn was
desperate for something to drink and eyed the lieutenant's canteen
greedily. The officer chuckled and waved him toward the DC-3 with his gun.
The cargo hold had by then turned into an oven, and waves of heat
stole his breath when he stepped inside. But the heat was suffused
with the odor of baking marijuana. The THC tetrahydrocannabinol,
the active ingredient in pot from 5,000 pounds of Santa Marta Gold
was coaxed into the air by the rising mercury, intoxicating him like
some massive vaporizer as he toiled and sweated. He stacked the bales
in fours, but after only a few stacks, he found himself utterly stoned.
His business partners had left to retrieve money to buy off the
lieutenant a requested $2 million. But the lieutenant's patience
was wearing thin, and he was toying with the idea of shooting
Platshorn. A fine example that could be of what happens to
traffickers when they didn't pay his "landing fees." Platshorn wasn't
worried not a bit. He tore a corner off one of the bales and joined
four rolling papers. Then he rolled a massive joint and lit it like
some pungent torch. The Colombian soldiers laughed at him and crowed
"loco." Then, with the lieutenant off in the shade somewhere,
Platshorn offered the joint to the bemused, carbine-toting
Colombians, and a few accepted. To them, this man didn't seem to be
much of a threat at all.
The lieutenant returned and ordered Platshorn and the pilots down a
trail through a banana grove and into a van. Thirst overwhelmed him.
They were to be taken to the village of La Cienaga, Platshorn says,
and shot as an example.
The smuggler might have been stoned, but he still had his wits about
him. He plopped down in the middle of the trail, and the pilots
followed suit. Platshorn was stalling for time. Just then, Dávila
rolled up in a Jeep, probably his infamous Renegade, with two clear
plastic bags filled with $40,000 a fraction of what the lieutenant
had asked for, but a dead smuggler was worthless.
Though this particular load involved almost-lethal complications, it
was the beginning of a lucrative partnership that would last the
length of the Tunas' smuggling operations. As the money began flowing
in, the Tunas invested in other businesses. They operated out of the
Fontainebleau Hotel on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach for a time and
even out of a houseboat moored along the same brightly lit main
thoroughfare. Platshorn had a million-dollar home just across the
Intracoastal from the Fontainebleau, with an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
The Tunas invested in yachts, particularly Fort Lauderdale-based
Striker Aluminum Yachts. Its treasurer, Mark Phillips, whose family
owned the company, joined the enterprise, court documents say. He was
able to retrofit yachts for maximum carrying capacity, painting water
lines on the hulls to give the illusion that they weren't riding low
even when they were pregnant with tons of grass. Thus, when pleasure
boat traffic was hull to hull, streaming into Miami or Port
Everglades, the Black Tunas could hide in plain sight.
Platshorn never saw the "herb business" as a career, he says.
Smuggling means living with borrowed freedom. Sooner or later, it all
comes crashing down. The Black Tunas, in fact, were in for a reality
check in the spring of 1977. A stash house on San Marino Drive in
Miami Beach was filled to the ceiling with eight tons of weed when
police raided the waterfront home located off the Venetian Causeway.
Platshorn and other key Tunas weren't there, but 17 gang members
were arrested.
With a modest amount of money and a couple of relatively profitable
legit businesses, Platshorn resolved to stay on the margins of the
smuggling trade, no longer a key player. Others, including Phillips,
tried to make a go of it on their own, but it would come as no
surprise to Platshorn that these later smuggles would end in disaster.
"[Phillips] was a fuck-up," Platshorn says with a laugh. "Everything
he touched turned to shit."
But it was when the son of a well-to-do Ford dealer in Fayetteville,
North Carolina, entered the operations of the Black Tuna Gang that
the operation really drifted off-course. George Purvis Jr. wanted to
join the business. More important, Purvis (who couldn't be found for
this article and is said to have entered the federal witness
protection program) had connections in the auto industry that could
save the by-then struggling South Florida Auto Auction.
Platshorn needed his legitimate businesses to be financially solvent
so he could provide for his family when he left the game. One hand
washes the other: Purvis would ship cars to the auction, and
Platshorn would introduce him to Dávila. It all seemed so sensible,
and he looked at it as a down payment on the straight-and-narrow
life. But shaking hands with Purvis, who eventually became a prime
witness against Platshorn, was the worst move this businessman ever made.
During Purvis' and Phillips' first endeavor, Platshorn's 85-foot
yacht, Presidential, ran aground in the Bahamas, and 40,000 pounds of
weed was lost. Platshorn wasn't on the boat at the time, but Bahamian
police surprised a couple of Tuna members trying to salvage the load.
The smugglers fled and were allegedly seen throwing green bales into
the azure waters of the Bahamas. In his testimony at Platshorn's
trial in Eastern District Court in North Carolina, Purvis said that
Platshorn was upset that they'd been caught and told them that "if he
had been here himself, it would not have happened."
In September 1977, Purvis and Phillips hatched another plan to bring
in 22,000 pounds of pot off the coast of North Carolina from Dávila's
80-foot Venezuelan trawler, Don Elias. At Phillips' request,
Platshorn got the OK from Dávila.
To meet the Don Elias, Purvis hired Wade Bailey, captain of the
shrimp trawler Osprey, whose name in Wrightsville Beach, North
Carolina, would soon become infamous.
A bag of diapers was sent to Dávila in Colombia, signifying "The baby
is ready; send the mother." The DEA claimed that in November,
Meinster took a room at the Hilton Hotel in Wilmington, North
Carolina, overlooking the Customs offices. Radio equipment was set up
so he could monitor law enforcement chatter (though Platshorn claims
that neither he nor Meinster were anywhere near the deal).
With members of the gang gathered at the hotel, Purvis told Meinster
he suspected Bailey was an informant, court documents say. Purvis
alleged that the Tunas' security chief, Chip Grant, suggested he
shoot Bailey, but Meinster vetoed the idea. The next day, Bailey and
his crew aboard the Osprey met the Don Elias some 20 miles from the
mouth of the Cape Fear River. The transfer began after the crews
shouted the words black tuna back and forth. Purvis was nearby on a
smaller boat but stayed clear of the transaction. He headed back to
port and purportedly received a message from Bailey: "I'm catching
all kinds of fish. My hold's going to be full soon. Why don't you
come back and catch some?"
Bailey hauled the load up the Cape Fear River to its predetermined
destination on the Brunswick River. Halfway through the unloading,
Customs officials swarmed the boat and arrested 11 men. One of them,
Lee Smith, was caught leaving the site in a rental truck full of pot.
The next day, the Coast Guard cutter Vigorous seized the Don Elias.
Bailey was indeed a paid informant, says former Assistant U.S.
Attorney Herman Gaskins. Federal agents later raided the abandoned
hotel room. Among the agents was Gaskins, who says he found the
gang's belongings and CB radios.
Out of everyone involved, it was Bailey who came out smelling like a
rose. He got $7,000 from the Black Tunas for his participation, plus
$10,000 from the government for his role as an informant. After the
bust, Bailey skimmed 500 pounds of pot from the shipment a little
icing on the cake that he turned around and sold for $97,000, the
News and Observer newspaper in Raleigh, North Carolina, reported.
When all was said and done, he was granted immunity from prosecution
and ended up pocketing the ill-gotten cash. Bailey generated a bit of
his own myth: T-shirts reading "Don't Shoot, I'm Not Wade Bailey"
were in high demand along the beaches of North Carolina.
Shortly after turning himself in to authorities in North Carolina,
Purvis bonded out and returned to South Florida and to Platshorn's doorstep.
His legal troubles didn't deter him from trying to land a profitable
load. In yet another failed trip, Purvis and others crash-landed a
cargo plane on an airstrip in the Colombian jungle. The aircraft had
to be buried before the Colombian Army found it. "The Colombians
wanted to bury Purvis," Platshorn says.
Purvis returned to the States and surrendered to federal authorities.
It was then, the government contends, that Purvis began cooperating
with the DEA. Now under the watchful eye of federal agents, Purvis
devised yet another trip to Colombia in March. Platshorn knew pot
wouldn't be the only thing he'd try to haul back. He called Dávila
ahead of Purvis' arrival and said, "Don't give these assholes
cocaine." If Purvis had procured the coke, it would likely have meant
life in prison for Meinster and Platshorn.
But the once-familiar landscape had already begun to change. Coca
refineries were beginning to spring up in Colombia; mountains of
cocaine were on their way. Colombian tough guys would be coming to
Miami to wrest control from the Cubans and clear the way for the
cartels. Platshorn was feeling the first gusts of a blizzard, and he
didn't like it.
Purvis disappeared after that last trip. The next time Platshorn saw
him, Purvis was sitting in the witness stand.
A sealed indictment against the Tunas was opened in federal court in
May 1978. Agents arrested Platshorn, who quickly bonded out. But
several months later, his bond was revoked.
The Black Tunas' attorneys had volunteered to surrender their clients
peaceably. Instead, at 6 a.m. September 10, Platshorn received a call
from a federal agent saying that they were outside his home and that
he had 30 seconds to answer the door before it would be kicked in.
Platshorn's spacious house was soon filled with agents wearing FBI
and DEA windbreakers no doubt a strange sight, since the two
agencies had a long history of mutual suspicion. It was their first
joint venture and a celebrated victory in a renewed War on Drugs.
Then-Attorney General Griffin Bell announced, "It is one of the
biggest drug busts by federal authorities in history."
Watching the evening news or reading the extensive coverage of the
Tuna bust in the Miami Herald, smugglers no doubt took notice. They
saw how risky marijuana was and searched out more valuable and compact goods.
"Operation Banco" was all over the headlines. A thorough review of
bank transactions, in fact, ultimately brought the Tunas down, the
feds claimed. Former DEA agent Michael Levine says the agencies
wanted the public to believe there was a new, fresh way to fight the
war. But no one, least of all Levine, could really argue that the
Tunas were busted up by anything or anyone other than Wade Bailey and
George Purvis Jr.
"Informants are the name of the game," Levine says. "If you have an
informant in the organization, you're gonna make the case."
It was a slam dunk in the Eastern District Court of North Carolina.
The feds had the informants, and they had 11 tons of grass seized
from the Osprey. It took less than two weeks to convict Platshorn and
Meinster of aiding and abetting marijuana importation. But this was
dress rehearsal for a bigger trial the more serious charges leveled
against the Tunas in Florida.
The trial in the Southern District of Florida would be a test of
endurance. It began in September 1979 and dragged on for nearly five
months, with charges against 12 defendants detailed in a 105-page
indictment the Miami Herald said "reads like a paperback thriller,"
with 36 counts of criminal activity.
The trial was, by most accounts, pretty tedious at first. That is,
until December 6, when the jury was sequestered so Atlee Wampler of
the Miami Organized Crime Strike Force, consisting of Justice
Department prosecutors, could announce to Judge James Lawrence King
that they had uncovered a plot to disrupt the trial. In this supposed
plot, Meinster and Platshorn were conspiring to have King murdered
an allegation Platshorn calls "bullshit." It was later rejected by a
jury. Wampler also claimed that several of the defendants, as well as
Platshorn's wife at the time, Lynn, were planning to bribe jurors.
One juror was subsequently removed and charged with obstruction of
justice. The plot was slapped across the front page of the Herald.
Miami FBI Chief Arthur F. Nehrbass growled to an Associated Press
reporter, "To permit our courts to be destroyed by a gang of drug
dealers is unthinkable."
This trial came to a close in February 1980, with Platshorn sentenced
to 64 years in prison, Meinster to 54. Out of all the defendants,
Platshorn would remain in prison the longest.
The monochromatic world of prison was as different as it could be
from the bright and vibrant seascapes of South Florida. In Marion
Supermax a federal prison in Illinois for only the most violent
offenders tormented souls howled through the night. The clangor of
fists and feet striking steel bars echoed in the corridors.
Platshorn was a born rebel. He rebelled against the marijuana laws he
believed were wrong the very laws that would relegate many of his
best years to prison. Now, his every movement was controlled by the
institution. Still, he found ways to resist, ways that wouldn't
necessarily land him in solitary confinement. He smuggled
cigarettes. The vehicles for contraband were food carts, not luxury
yachts, but the tiny smuggles soothed a bruised ego. Asked if he
managed to smoke grass in the pen, Platshorn grins and says, "Can I
plead the Fifth?"
Despite some small victories, Platshorn's life as he knew it was
over. He'd be leaving behind his wife Lynn and two children. He and
his previous wife had also remained close, but she was suffering from
complications of lupus and died long before he was released, as did
his 12-year-old daughter, Hope, from an asthmatic condition. "We made
plans we knew would never happen," Platshorn says.
He knew it would be a long time before he'd breathe free air again,
so he and Lynn decided to get a divorce.
The Black Tunas' lengthy prison sentences presented a cautionary tale
for the smuggling trade. Said Judge King: "In a thunderous warning,
the Congress said: 'The illegal traffic in drugs should be attacked
with the full power of the federal government.' The price for
participation in this traffic should be prohibitive. It should be
made too dangerous to be attractive."
But self-congratulatory statements from law enforcement officials
about the pall that the Black Tunas' case had thrown over the drug
smuggling business sounded hollow in the face of new supply sources
and new drugs.
Larger-than-life tales of exotic locales and near misses among the
buccaneering marijuana smugglers would be replaced by stories of the
carnage wrought by cocaine cartels, sensationalized in television
shows such as Miami Vice and films like Scarface. Platshorn and
company stood at the edge of the preceding epoch.
The story of the Tunas can still be found on the DEA's website. But
while the group's demise is touted as one of the agency's great
victories, insiders say the Black Tuna Gang is in fact the emblem of
the feds' ultimate defeat.
Platshorn is standing in a long, shuffling line at the DMV in West
Palm Beach, just one of a hundred seeking validation in the form of a
plastic card. He wears a pair of baggy swim trunks, a gray polo, and
a cap that reads "Stuntman's Association." He could be someone's
grandpa, short and jolly-looking, darkened by a perpetual tan from
years on a boat far off Florida's Atlantic Coast.
Unlike most of the people here, Platshorn won't be getting a driver's
license. In fact, he hasn't driven a car in 30 years, so he'd have to
take a refresher course. He's here to get a state I.D., also known as
a walking I.D.
Jobless, nearly penniless, living at a halfway house, his only means
of identification is a prison identification card Robert Platshorn,
prisoner number 00603-004. His son, Matthew, who lives in Reno,
Nevada, hasn't been to see him in the two-and-a-half months since his
release. In fact, Platshorn doesn't want him to come to this place.
The only job he's been able to secure so far, cold-calling for AT&T
an old ex-con standby ended in abrupt and abject failure. He made a
few calls but was angrily rejected each time, something for which
Platshorn had no stomach. Even the renowned pitchman couldn't sell a
prospective customer on the other end of an unsolicited phone call.
His movement and activities are still controlled at the halfway
house. He can't leave until he has a steady 9-to-5 job a prospect
that disgusts the black marketeer, who's never punched a clock. This
new life has stripped him to the bones. All he has are the adventures
of the past, which now seem more myth than reality in this age of
state-of-the-art, home-based hydroponic pot farms. Nobody smuggles
pot anymore. In this new market, Platshorn is a relic of the past and
the jealous guardian of his own legend, which he hopes will provide
his ticket to something approaching prosperity.
Platshorn approaches a curt, blond, middle-aged DMV employee sorting
this human traffic. She asks him for his I.D.
"It's been 25 years," Platshorn says.
She glares at him.
"What?" she says. "Are you saying you're 25 or that it's 25 years
since your license expired?"
"It's 25 years expired."
"Do you have a copy?"
"No."
"Do you think it's in the archives?"
"I've been in jail."
With little resolved, Platshorn waits in line. All around is the
incomprehensible droning of myriad languages and dialects and the
occasional flash of the camera for license pictures. Finally, his turn arrives.
After a few questions, he declares, "I'm the longest-serving
marijuana prisoner."
The woman behind the desk raises her eyebrows, but she doesn't look
up from the computer monitor.
"Lesson learned?" she asks.
.
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