There are NO American drug lords. Honest.

We've devoted much cyber-ink to two cocaine-laden jets that have been linked to some powerful Americans. The big question: Why has no American gone to jail as a result of these busts?

Daniel Hopsicker looks into that poser:

Frederic Geffon of Skyway Aircraft and Royal Sons Inc., was the last registered owner of the DC9.

Yet just when Geffon had probably begun to breathe a little easier, with everything seemingly well-in-hand vis-a-vis the little “incident” with his plane 18 months ago...

This other plane, this second plane, a Gulfstream, goes and gets itself busted.

And now even the Tampa Tribune is looking for him. And do they find him? No sir... "Making themselves unavailable" is one of the things these guys do best.

Hopsicker goes on to note that, while bank robberies often garner obsessive television news coverage, the media prefer to ignore the coke jet scandals. One exception would be the St. Petersburg Times, which has published a bizarre defense of the parties named in the Skyway affair. Strange and infuriating as this story is, we do learn a few interesting details:

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

In the 1980s, the plane flew for billionaire Kirk Kerkorian's Tracinda Corp., majority owner of the MGM Mirage resort and casino chain. It also shuttled Kenny Rogers across the country on a music tour.

The NFL's Seahawks used it in the 1990s. And it was Howard Dean's presidential campaign plane in 2004.

Later that year, Wolfson sold the plane to Geffon for 2.5-million shares of stock in Kovar's company, SkyWay Communications Holding Corp.

This list of previous owners is meant to pound home the idea that we can't blame previous owners for the fact that the jet was found on a Mexican tarmac filled with five tons of coke.

I am particularly intrigued by the detail that Geffon sold the plane for stock in a company run by a scamster. Skyway was headed by Brent Kovar, who had a history as a con artist, selling investors the proverbial "piece of blue sky" -- a wireless data-transfer technology which simply did not exist. Anyone doing research into the man would have found indications that he had something other than his elbow up his sleeve.

"I lost too much money in the Skyway deal," Geffon said.

Odd. Seems to me that Geffon made money. He got a DC 9 in return for a bunch of worthless stock.

The jet underwent a rapid sale just before the drug run, which, as we have seen in earler stories, is standard practice. Usually, these sales are never finalized unless a drug flight goes sour.

In the case of the Skyway jet, the last person to hold the title was a mysterioso figure named Jorge Corrales, of Simi Valley, California -- a location rarely associated with high-rollers in the aviation field. Here's how the St. Petersburg Times sees the Corrales transaction.

That's when the call came from California.

The man known as Jorge Corrales wanted the plane, tail number N900SA.

Corrales, who could not be reached for comment, made six payments to Geffon totaling $1.047-million, court documents show.

The St Petersburg times does not ask where this sort of money came from, or why the authorities have not arrested Mr. Corrales, even though the DC9 went off on its drug run soon after the purchase.

Back to Hopsicker:

One thing about CIA planes. None of them seem to ever form comfortable relationships with their owners.

The same plane gets flipped back and forth endlessly between brass plate firms and dummy front companies, from Pacific Rim International to Rim Pacific, Rim-Pac, Pac-Rim, and Rim-Yo-Mama LLC.

And all this subterfuge is just for one plane.

Rim-Yo-Mama? That is just crude.

Deserving special mention is an investment bank located in tiny Boerne, Texas, and La Jolla, Ca. Argyll Equities LLC has the distinction of having participated in this operation in at least two separate ways.

Argyll was the second-largest shareholder in SkyWay, according to bankruptcy filings, owning nearly 21 million shares of totally worthless stock, which might be considered something of an investment black eye, unless other undisclosed considerations were involved.

And Argyll also raised funds for a Mexican industrialist who’s in business with the very people whose dope keeps getting busted in the Yucatan.

According to documents filed with the SEC in 2005, Argyll Equities LLC was paid to raise a $17.0 million loan for Mexican industrialist Jose Serrano Segovia’s shipping line, GRUPO TMM.

Segovia turned around and, according to an English language newspaper in Chile, The Santiago Times, on May 5, 1998, “provided significant capital” to a “Chilean narcotics trafficker" named Manuel Vicente Losada, arrested in the Chilean capital of Santiago after being “linked to a shipment of five tons of cocaine which U.S. drug enforcement officials in Miami intercepted over six years ago on the vessel Harbour, as it headed toward Guantanamo Bay.”

Hey, wait a minute... Guantanamo Bay?

Here is the Argyll web site. Liepar Destin published a magnificent story on Argyll last year. Some highlights:

In 1997 Mexican Newspaper El Universal De Mexico reported "Drug trafficker Losada is a partner in some 30 shipping companies."

We've noted in previous posts that creepy cargo shipping companies have become a recurrent motif.

Through A Federal Indictment we learn that Argyll Equities was the recipient of $9.7 million dollars it didn't earn, in a "purported stock loan program operated by Argyll Equities, L.L.C," which resulted in criminal charges earlier this year against three men.