Pot smuggler, jailed in 1980s, hopes for mercy
New weed laws make more prison pointless, 3rd drug brother says.
Before they wound up broke and in prison, the DeLisi brothers figure they grossed $50 million moving marijuana from Colombia to South Florida in the 1970s.
The brothers note with pride that, after all the cargo planes of weed they flew across the Caribbean, their beefs never turned bloody. They never snuffed snitches or killed rival dealers. And the DeLisis refused to smuggle cocaine or heroin.
“There were so many times when they tried to get us to bring the other stuff, the coke and the heroin,” says Richard DeLisi, the youngest and perhaps boldest of the three outlaws. “We would never do it because we knew it could kill people. I feel good about that still today.”
The DeLisi brothers were bit players in South Florida’s cocaine cowboys era, throwbacks to a time before narco-mafia empires and billion-dollar money laundering
rings. After he and his brothers were nabbed in a sting operation in 1988, Richard DeLisi continues serving a 90-year sentence.
Considering that he wasn’t accused of a violent crime, and he was selling a product that most Americans no longer believe is a dangerous substance, DeLisi is agitating for an early end to his prison sentence. Most U.S. states now permit marijuana use, at least for medical purposes, as Americans’ attitude toward pot has grown more accepting.
Now 69 and an inmate at South Bay Correctional Facility, DeLisi ticks off a list of health troubles. After a back operation and prostate surgery, he uses a walker. He has arthritis, diabetes, neuropathy, high blood pressure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
DeLisi is scheduled to be released in 2024, according to the Florida Department of Corrections, shortly before his 75th birthday. “I’m costing them big money keeping me here, with all my problems with my health and my age,” DeLisi says. “And it’s legal now.”
Of course, even with state-sanctioned pot shops popping up nationwide, it’s not legal to import thousands of pounds of unregulated, untaxed weed into the U.S. But DeLisi and his oldest brother, Ted, 76, point to the wave of cannabis decriminalization that has swept the country and say it’s time for Richard to go home.
“All I want to do is get my brother out of prison,” says Ted, free for the past five years and living with his son in North Carolina. “What good is it doing to keep him in prison?”
Adding urgency to Rich DeLisi’s plea for mercy, his 32-year-old daughter is in a rehab center in Tennessee after a serious car crash in April shattered her hip. She was a toddler when her father started his prison sentence.
The DeLisi boys were sons of a Queens mechanic. Ted was born in 1941. Chuck in 1943, Richard in 1949.
Richard was always a tough case, a childhood friend recalls. Hampered by undiagnosed dyslexia, he struggled in school.
“He was exceedingly intelligent,” childhood friend Ted Feimer says. “He just couldn’t read.”
Richard coped by lashing out at authority. Feimer’s first encounter with Richard came at a Catholic grammar school in Queens. Richard was being dragged down a hallway by a nun who had a death grip on his ear. Instead of submitting, Richard kicked her and screamed obscenities.
When they got older, Richard would borrow a Corvette from one of his older brothers and take Feimer for a joy ride. Richard would hit 100 mph. If a cop pulled him over, Richard would talk himself out of a ticket.
“He was a poster boy for inappropriate behavior,” Feimer says. “There were no limits.”
For all his wildness, Feimer said, Richard was fun-loving and basically harmless. He wasn’t violent or mean-spirited.
“He could light up a room,” Feimer says. “He just knew instinctively how to deal with people and how to get things done.”
The DeLisi clan moved to South Florida in the late 1960s. Father and brothers opened an auto repair shop in Broward County, but they were new in town, and business was sparse.
“We were starving to death,” Ted DeLisi recalls. “We just couldn’t make any money.”
They entered their souped-up car in races at a Hollywood drag strip in hopes of winning the $50 prize. “We used to go down to try to get the $50 so we’d have money to eat,” Ted says.
The DeLisis finally caught a break when a customer showed up at their shop with a Volkswagen Beetle that needed a clutch. The DeLisis were partial to American cars, but they couldn’t turn away a customer.
“We had no idea how to work on a Volkswagen,” Ted says.
They called a VW mechanic friend and he coached them through the repair. The DeLisis charged $39 for the clutch. Then they painted “VW Repair” on a sheet of plywood and found a steady stream of Bugs rolling through their shop.
“Every kid in Florida had a Volkswagen,” Ted says. “You’d open the ashtray and see all the roach clips. One thing led to another, and we started in.”
In their first big score, the DeLisis loaded a bale of Jamaican pot into a Buick Electra and drove to New York in 1970. They made $25,000 — and they were hooked.
“We were selling this Jamaican weed,” Ted says. “But the people in New York kept telling us, ‘We want the Colombian weed.’ They called it cheeba cheeba.”
So the brothers bought tickets to Colombia in hopes of finding a ranch that could serve as their headquarters. Soon they were flying Lockheed Lodestars loaded with pot from northern Colombia to grass landing strips in Florida.
Wholesale weed cost $35 a pound in Colombia. In the U.S., pot fetched $300 a pound.
“It was like a dream come true,” Ted says. “We had more money than we could believe. We went from nothing to everything.”
Ted bought a palatial house on the Intracoastal Waterway in Delray Beach. Chuck got a place in Boca Raton. Richard stayed in Broward.
If the brothers felt like going to New York or Las Vegas, they’d charter a plane. Richard used pot proceeds to fund his expensive hobby of drag racing. He traveled the country with a race car known as The Waco Kid, named for the character in the Mel Brooks movie “Blazing Saddles.”
The DeLisi brothers had no interest in banking a few million and hanging it up. They kept buying bigger planes — “aeroplanes” in their Queens brogue — and bringing in bigger shipments of weed.
The brothers might not have been ruthless, but they were creative and relentless. Ted procured an oil tanker in Southeast Asia. He spent $1 million rebuilding it. His plan: Bring shipments of Thai stick to the U.S.
To Ted, the logic was simple: “Why should I bust my ass when I can do this and make a fortune?”
It was also contradictory. Making millions illegally proved hard work. The DeLisi brothers dealt constantly with engine breakdowns and plane crashes. They had so much cash they buried it in backyards and hid it in attics. They opened offshore accounts in Curacao.
The brothers loved debauchery. Good-looking and gregarious, they smoked pot and snorted coke. Ted had a family but didn’t spend much time at home.
“I wanted to run around and do drugs and party with the girls,” he says. “I was stupid.”
The decade-long party ended in February 1980, in an orange grove near Indiantown. Cops seized a plane loaded with 100 pounds of the DeLisis’ weed, and prosecutors made a case that the brothers had brought more than 150,000 pounds of cannabis into the U.S. from 1975 to 1980.
Even though they’d been caught red-handed, and even though prosecutors painted them as long-term narcotraffickers, the brothers caught a break. Richard served a little more than a year, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. Ted served four years.
Richard insists he wanted to stay out of the smuggling business after he got out of prison in 1984. But he was also broke and in debt to loan sharks.
When a pilot friend suggested a deal, Richard says he declined. But when the friend kept badgering him, Richard says he reluctantly agreed. But the deal was a set-up, and the brothers were busted again in 1988.
The trial was in Polk County. The judge and jury saw slick drug dealers from New York by way of South Florida. Richard got 90 years. Ted was sentenced to 90 years, too, although on appeal, the sentence was reduced to 60 years. He was released in 2013.
Chuck fared the best. After a decade on the lam, he was caught in California and served a few years.
Aside from occasional news stories, the case attracted little attention. The DeLisis never ran up a body count or shot it out with the cops. In an era of “Miami Vice” and “Scarface,” their mom-and-pop approach to drug trafficking seemed quaint.
“There was no violence,” Ted DeLisi says. “Nobody was ever shot or killed.”
The DeLisis say they changed during their long prison sentences. Ted earned his high school diploma and found God. Richard learned how to read and write.
Chuck, for his part, lives in Tennessee and works as a truck driver.
Richard has been pleading his case to defense attorneys who might find a way to win lenience. He argues that his second bust was a clear case of entrapment — he had no intention of re-entering the smuggling business and was set up by an informant trying to win his own freedom. Richard says he’s on a mission to get out of prison after his daughter’s life-threatening car crash.
Feimer, for his part, argues that his childhood friend no longer is a reckless young man.
“I’m in no way defending Richard’s behavior. But it’s enough now already,” Feimer says. “It’s no longer justice. It’s vengeance. He needs a break. He’s done his time.”
‘It’s no longer justice. It’s vengeance. He (Richard) needs a break. He’s done his time.’ Ted Feimer
Childhood friend