Grand jury breaks Customs cover. (Customs Service agents' smuggling activities)

Indictment alleges Delray pilot imported $500 million in cocaine

DELRAY BEACH -- A double agent called "Frog" smuggled at least a half billion dollars worth of drugs into Florida and Texas and sold it to criminal elements while working for U.S. Customs' so-called controlled delivery drug program.

Over the past 10 months, South Florida Business Journal also has reported that pilots and ground base operators in South Florida, who also work as informants for U.S. Customs and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), have avoided criminal prosecution for buying and selling unsafe aircraft by demanding protection from their U.S. Customs controllers.

But the power of these rogue operators to avoid prosecution seems to have come to an end with the indictment of Rodney Norris Matthews, a Delray Beach pilot, informant and the alleged mastermind of a ring that allegedly imported and sold $500 million worth of drugs since 1985.

A federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale issued indictments of Matthews and Texas businessman Carrol Durham McCauley in July. But the indictments were sealed, as were a flurry of motions relating to the case.

An 18-count superseding indictment was issued Sept. 29 and then unsealed. It accuses Matthews and McCauley of 18 counts of cocaine importation, sale and conspiracy.

It demands the forfeiture of a long list of assets, "including but not limited to $500,000,000, in that such sum in aggregate was received by said defendants in exchange for and …