Drug Smuggler, Good Bargainer: In Jail But Well Off

When Frederik J. "Rik" Luytjes was indicted by a federal grand jury in August 1986, Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d said the charges marked the end of the largest cocaine-smuggling operation in U.S. history: a business that brought 9 1/4 tons of cocaine into the United States from 1981 through 1984 and made about $25 million in illicit profits.

Officials marveled at the technical sophistication of the operation devised by Luytjes, a skilled pilot and owner of a Scranton-based aircraft repair company called Air America. Luytjes had done what many considered impossible: fly nonstop about 2,500 miles in a small, drug-loaded plane from a small airstrip on the Colombian coast out over the Atlantic and up the East Coast to rural northeastern Pennsylvania, evading this country's anti-drug radar net around Florida.

Now, two years later, the attorney for the Scranton businessman who Luytjes has said helped him smuggle $4 million in drug profits out of the United States is contending that Luytjes was as skilled at navigating the federal

criminal justice system as he was the skies of the Caribbean.

In their zeal to nail down a plea agreement with a major cocaine smuggler, says attorney Gregory T. Magarity, federal prosecutors "gave away the store." Magarity adds that prosecutors then broke ethical guidelines in investigating and indicting his client, Joseph P. Donahue.

Magarity said Luytjes' treatment by federal prosecutors proves that "crime does pay," and, indeed, Luytjes seems likely to weather the experience well.

Though now in the second year of a 10-year prison term resulting from his 1986 guilty plea, Luytjes, 40, is expected to emerge from prison with the title to Mastwood, a 3,000-acre estate in the Poconos; with 565 acres of undeveloped land in Upstate New York, and with a condominium in Jamaica. In addition, he may be able to retain the $2 million he has in a Swiss bank account, although the government is trying to claim it.

Moreover, Luytjes will not have to worry about the Internal Revenue Service hounding him for the unpaid taxes on an estimated $13 million in profits he made from drug trafficking. That issue was settled as part of his plea bargain by turning over $2.8 million to the IRS and letting several drug enforcement agencies keep some of his airplanes and equipment worth millions.