SHERMAN, Texas — Over the course of two days, jurors in Sherman federal court witnessed an extraordinary parade of officials from Colombia, Guatemala and Honduras testify in the case of an Oklahoma City businesswoman accused of registering planes in the U.S. on behalf of drug dealers.
Prosecutors also brought in two shackled prisoners -- a mid-level Sinaloa Cartel member and a pilot arrested for drug smuggling.
All of them came to testify in the case against Debra-Mercer Erwin, owner of Aircraft Guaranty Corp.
Dressed in full military uniform, Colombian Air Force Lt. Col. Alex Humberto Landino told jurors the number of jets carrying drugs in the Caribbean dropped 59% from 2020 to 2022. He testified that he believes the indictment played a big role in that drop.
Col. Landino, director of his country’s air and missile defense, also told jurors that there had been 29% drop during that period in cocaine seizures in Central America. That represented a loss of $1 billion to narcotraffickers, he said.
Rony Chacon-Lopez, a Guatemalan Air Force officer of air intelligence, testified that in 2019, there were 345 illegal drug flights that came into Guatemala. The number of flights began rapidly decreasing beginning in 2020, he testified.
“It was the first time in three years that in 120 days there were no violations of national airspace,” he said.
Earlier in the week, a retired U.S. Defense Department official testified that after the 2020 indictments, that included an aircraft trust company’s operator, on narcotrafficking allegations that there was an immediate and precipitous drop in U.S.-registered planes carrying cocaine into Guatemala.
“It was obvious that something had happened,” Jesus Daniel Romero, the former intelligence officer, said in federal court.
Prosecutors brought in Julio Cesar Olivas-Felix, the former Sinaloa Cartel member, to testify about the importance of airplanes in drug smuggling. Before his arrest in 2016, his job involved transportation and logistics.
“Without the transportation, the business would not exist,” he said.
Paul Mack, a U.S. Department of Commerce Special Agent at Bureau of Industry and Security, told jurors a February 2019 WFAA story detailing how there were more than 1,000 planes registered in the tiny East Texas town of Onalaska piqued their interest. That story described how Mercer-Erwin’s company had registered more than 1,000 planes on behalf of foreign citizens and detailed how her planes had been repeatedly seized outside of their country loaded with drugs.
Mack told jurors that as registered owner of the planes, Mercer-Erwin’s company is responsible for knowing who her customers are and the whereabouts of the planes.
“It’s absolutely critical” because that “aircraft could be weaponized,” he said.
He also testified that Aircraft Guaranty was responsible for filing export documents when airplanes are taken out of the country.
“You are 100 percent responsible for those assets,” he said.
A month after that WFAA story, another official sent Mercer-Erwin an email asking for information about exports and requesting to meet with her. He testified authorities could not get her to meet with them. So, eventually, they subpoenaed records for the company’s planes.
He said, once they started digging, they found hundreds of planes taken out of the country illegally. He said investigators determined that Mercer-Erwin didn’t know the whereabouts of many of the company’s planes.
Throughout the week, jurors have been hearing about a plane seized in Belize in February 2020 in the biggest cocaine bust in that nation’s history.
Mack explained to jurors how Aircraft Guaranty came to register that plane on behalf of a Heriberto Gastelum-Calderon, a convicted drug smuggler who had been deported from the U.S. years earlier.
The plane had been donated to air museum. However, a broker bought the plane on behalf of a company connected to the Sinaloa cartel in late 2019. That company then sold the plane to Gastelum, who then paid Aircraft Guaranty to register the plane in the U.S.
The plane left the U.S. in December 2019. It was seized months later in Belize.
In April 2020, Aircraft Guaranty filed paperwork returning ownership to Gastelum-Calderon.
Mack told jurors it was illegal to register the plane for Gastelum-Calderon and it was illegal to put it back in his name once it was seized.
Prosecutors are also trying to get statements that Mercer-Erwin gave authorities after her Dec. 2020 arrest entered into evidence. The judge said he would enter a ruling by 8:15 a.m. Monday.