By CHRIS HAWLEY
Associated Press
NEW YORK – U.S. prosecutors in a series of court cases say they are beginning to unravel the latest innovation in drug smuggling: South American gangs that are buying old jets and other planes, filling them with cocaine and flying them more than 3,000 miles across the ocean to Africa.
At least three gangs have struck deals to fly drugs to West Africa and from there to Europe, according to U.S. indictments.
“The sky’s the limit,” one Sierra Leone trafficker boasted to a Drug Enforcement Administration informant, according to court documents.