Brothers Fly Unregistered Plane with 35 lbs Pot

Two Alabama brothers flew straight into federal prison after piloting an unregistered plane stuffed with nearly 35 pounds of marijuana across state lines. George Bancroft Marshall, 39, and John Samuel Marshall IV, 42, both of Gulf Shores, Ala., were sentenced to 10 months in federal prison Wednesday, January 18, 2017, by U.S. District Judge Dee D. Drell in Alexandria, La.

George Marshall was convicted on one count of operation of an unregistered aircraft. John Marshall was convicted on one count of possession with intent to distribute marijuana. The pair must also forfeit the 1966 Mooney M20E aircraft used in the crime and serve over two years under federal supervision after release.

The flight went sideways the moment they touched down at Alexandria International Airport. On February 11, 2015, the brothers stopped overnight to refuel during a trip from California to Alabama. Homeland Security Investigations and Louisiana State Police boarded the plane and found 19 vacuum-sealed packages of marijuana—totaling 34.9 pounds—and 10 packages of hash oil weighing 20.9 ounces.

George Marshall, a self-admitted commercial pilot, had bought the $30,000 aircraft in Arkansas in January 2015 but never registered it. That decision saved him paperwork but cost him a year behind bars. Flying under the radar didn’t help when federal agents were already watching suspicious cross-country flights tied to drug trafficking.

The investigation was a joint operation involving Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s New Orleans Air and Marine Branch, and the Louisiana State Police. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert F. Moore, who called the flight a “floating drug lab with wings.”

The Marshalls now serve as a cautionary tale: you can ditch the FAA paperwork, but you can’t outrun federal law. Crossing state lines with a plane full of pot doesn’t make you a maverick—it makes you a federal inmate.