SWAT trainer to businessman, smuggler to convict: Messmer's story

Dale Messmer said his life of crime probably began like many of the students he speaks to today. He was bored and looking for some excitement.

Messmer said shortly after he left the Los Angeles Sheriff's Office, he took a contract job guarding gold shipments at a mine in Brazil.

Eventually that company transferred him to Colombia where he guarded pack mules that carried boxes away from a cabin on a mountain.

"One day some bandits attacked and a mule was shot," Messmer said. "A box broke open and that is when I realized they were filled with cocaine."

It wasn't until later that Messmer said he found out the company was owned by the infamous cocaine dealer Pablo Escobar.

After leaving Colombia under the pretense of visiting family, Messmer said he let his contract with the company expire and never went back again.

Several years later, after he became a successful businessman, having owned a limousine and charter airplane service, he was hired to fly some performers to a concert in Florida.

While there he was approached by someone from the Colombian cocaine cartel he had once worked for.

"He made me an offer I should have turned down but I didn't," Messmer stated.

For the next 2 and half years Messmer flew drugs into the country for the cartel, delivering and picking up loads a couple of times a month.

"I have flown into everything from jungle landing strips to private runways in the Bahamas," Messmer said.

Each time he flew in a load of drugs it was the same, Messmer said. He said he would get a call saying there was a delivery to pick up and when he went to the airport to get his plane there would be directions on his seat.

"I would fly my plane somewhere and then leave it there for a little while," Messmer said. "That way they could load my plane and we wouldn't know each other. That is how organized they were."

When he returned to his plane he would fly it to where the drugs were being sent and walk away from it again. Only this time when he returned it would be unloaded and there would be an envelop full of money on the pilot's seat.

"I would get anywhere between $50,000 to $200,000 a load," Messmer said.

One day Messmer said he was flying a load of cocaine into the United States on an overcast day, and when he dropped out of the clouds federal agents were waiting for him.

He tried to run but a jet caught him and forced him to land. They discovered cocaine, piles of drug money, a box of grenades and a machine gun on board.

Facing numerous federal charges relating to drug trafficking Messmer said he made bail and went on the run for 16 months.

When he was arrested Messmer said he fell under federal racketeering laws and authorities seized $3.8 million in assets and $9.4 million in total assets including property and real estate.

"I was arrested on a Wednesday and by Friday when the FBI led us away from our home I was worth $65, which is what I had in my pocket," Messmer said.

He continued, "I had 400 employees working for me at the time. Overnight there were 400 families who could no longer afford to buy groceries."

"My wife was killed by a drunk driver two years after I was locked up. I have five sons and two daughter. One of my sons still won't have anything to do with me because he is still mad at me. He has every right to be. Instead of being a father those years I was busy being a convict."


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James Gilbert can be reached at
jgilbert@yumasun.com or 539-6854.