Opinion ID: 707621
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Counts V and VI--Commander N9945S

Text: 32 Between July and October 1988, AEI received $1,900,000 for Aero Commander N9945S. Brenda Hough, the secretary at AEI, testified that Morales originally asked her to try to register the plane in Guatemala in the name of a dead person. Eventually, the plane was registered to Zuleta Trading, a Florida corporation owned by a Colombian man named Nestor Zuleta; AEI employees testified that the actual purchaser was Cuco Rodriguez. Mark Hough testified that Zuleta told him that his client, Cuco Rodriguez, was an upper-level Colombian drug trafficker and a member of a cartel. 33 Hough testified that the plane was delivered to Ricardo Londono in the Cayman Islands. Snyder testified that Morales told him that Londono was a Colombian aircraft broker with clients in the drug trade, and that Morales would not be surprised if some of the planes that he sold to Londono had later been seized with drugs on board. 34 Snyder also testified to an earlier incident involving Londono, when Morales had allegedly reneged on a debt stemming from an earlier deal with Londono and Rodriguez. According to Snyder's testimony, Londono sent three men to visit Morales at AEI's office, one of whom told Snyder that he would kill him and Morales and do whatever he needed to get the money that was owed. [4/22/92 at 131]. Morales did not take this threat idly. He hired a security expert who took the office staff out in the desert and taught them to fire various semi-automatic weapons which were then kept at the office until the conflict was resolved. 35 Morales again challenges the sufficiency of the government's evidence establishing that the plane was purchased with drug proceeds. Again his challenge falls far short. If the testimony about Rodriguez and Londono's activities had been insufficient, which it was not, the fact that the government again traced the funds to accounts supplied by the Andonian money laundering organization more than adequately supports the jury's verdict. 36