Feds describe how Miami contract pilot was caught trafficking cocaine

MIAMI – A Miami contract pilot known as “Jagger” flew a U.S.-registered private jet 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 load it onto trucks to travel to Mexico and the United States.

The plan to go to Honduras and then Mexico collapsed. De Las Casas and Ronier Sanchez, his co-pilot from Naucalpan, Mexico, crashed just off an airstrip in Venezuela.

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

Records show that's how DEA agents described the Aug. 6, 2016, 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 October 23, 2019, and U.S. District Judge Alvin W. Thompson sentenced him on June 2 to approximately 85 months in prison, the time already served , and three years in prison under supervision. released for his participation in two separate cocaine trafficking conspiracies.

Sanchez was arrested in Asuncion, Paraguay on March 25, 2021, he pleaded guilty on December 20, 2023, and Thompson sentenced him to 48 months in prison on December 23, 2023 for conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine on board a United States-registered aircraft