Surprisingly, many military men and women commit drug dealing to earn extra money. Yes, the United States military is the richest and best paid compared to the rest of the world, bar none! The salary is not enough if you have a family of 2 or more as an E-1 private-E-4 Specialist/Corporal.
The United States military does provide extra monthly entitlements such as food allowance, cost of living allowance, and combat pay to mention a few benefits. In order to receive some of these entitlements you must be married. Officers qualify for more benefits than enlisted.
I am setting the stage as to why active duty members take the chance to drug traffic. It is more safe to commit these crimes if you are stationed overseas. Crime does pay sometimes. Risk to reward ratio. Here are some drug trafficking crime stories that were told to me, while in the USDB.
One fellow inmate was convicted of trafficking MMDA and dirty ecstasy pills from Germany to the USA. He would travel to Amsterdam, Holland and buy over ten thousand pills at a time and ship them inside ceramics. He utilized the military mail system which is trusted by the US postal service and is not stringent on military packages. This method has been used over and over again.
He was caught because the receiver got involved in extra-curricular activities. This indirect arrest caused her to “snitch” on the whole operation. A common flaw of people is “GREED”. She did not stay low and messed up. Then, he was eventually caught in Germany, where he was stationed and received a 12 year sentence. Mike earned his Bachelor’s and now is a successful business owner. You can’t take the hustle out of people. Now he is all legal.
Second story is of a US soldier stationed in South America. He used military planes to transport the cocaine. He was living the life he said, He was low key and no one suspected anything. Everyone involved were tight lipped, until he felt pity for a few soldiers that were having family money troubles. He thought he could trust them.
Raul the leader, felt pity for a few soldiers that worked with him. They were having money and marriage troubles. He decided to let them in on the hustle with limitations. Even with these set of rules, the 2 friends started to flash their money and one was always arguing with his wife. The wife was suspicious and threatened her husband. This caused a little panic and things started to unravel for all of them. One snitched and then the other. Raul, ended up being convicted and sentenced to 27 years, while the snitches each received 7 and 8 years. I never trusted the snitches and stayed away from them in our group.
Another convicted drug dealer was Peter. He was stationed in Germany and was selling ecstasy as well. Ecstasy in Europe is huge and easy to obtain. You could make 3-5 dollars extra per pill wholesale. He was also transported drugs into the states using the mailing system. Once he was tipped off he fled and was living on the lam in eastern Europe. He had planned for this all along and was doing just fine. But his parents convinced him to turn himself in and that it was the best solution. I can bet the military prosecutors sweet talked the parents that he would receive a fair trial in the United States Army justice system. Never trust your government. He told me how he was convinced by his parents. I could see it in his face he greatly regretted that fateful decision. He was sentenced to 30 years because it included escaping and evading arrest.
This is what I mean, if you understand some law, you can defeat them by cutting time off your sentence.
Another case, I found to be interesting were about some Marines that would rob the money trucks. They had gotten away with it a few times, but as always there was one weak link. Just like in the movies, but most people are not murderers. He explained to me some details, however I cannot recall, he was the leader and very intelligent. He had become a jailhouse lawyer and had fought to reduce his sentence. He was appealing his sentence tooth and nail and slowly winning. Originally he had about 80 years and was down to less than 30 and had served about 16 years, when I had spoken to him.
I spoke to inmates because I wanted to learn why they were in there. The mistakes they made and about the law enforcement procedures that followed or were used to convict them. Moreover, military criminal law is very arbitrary and political. Which is similar to socialist courts. The civilian legal system is different.
Military Prison Experiences 