From: Center for the Study of the Drone | Bard College
By Dan Gettinger
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One of the strangest attempts to smuggle drones out of the country to China involved an international drug ring, codebooks and scuba divers. According to the criminal complaint, the story begins when Soon Ah Kow, a Hong Kong-based counterfeit cigarette smuggler and co-conspirator in the case, told American undercover law enforcement agents that one of his sources, a Taiwanese national named Hui Sheng Shen, could arrange for heroin and methamphetamine to be imported into the United States. According to Kow, Shen was a middleman for wealthy narcotics dealers. (Kow was arrested in 2012 on charges of smuggling millions of dollars worth of counterfeit cigarettes into the U.S.)
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Following the discovery of the drugs, the undercover agents continued to exchange emails with Shen and Chang regarding additional import deals. In October 2011, the undercover agents met the two men in Las Vegas. Over the course of several meetings, Shen admitted to the agents that they were shifting their interest from delivering narcotics to acquiring military technology. He revealed that an associate—whom he identified as a “secret assistant” to a high-ranking official in China—desired to purchase a Northrop Grumman E-2 Hawkeye, a manned carrier-based early warning aircraft. When asked by the agents about the client, Shen said that they worked for the Chinese government.
