These Lowcountry drug smugglers fled to Australia when the feds came calling

Operation Jackpot stunned Beaufort County.

It was less the magnitude of the smuggling than the large number of people named in a series of federal indictments as mother lodes of names were dumped on the public. Some of the people represented the best of local families.

Almost 200 people were charged in the early 1980s, including lawyers, the son of a state legislator and a state wildlife officer dubbed the “Masked Marvel” for allegedly wearing a ski mask as he aided smugglers while on patrol.

“For some, it was totally out of character,” said Bart Daniel, who devoted 3 1/2 years of his life to Operation Jackpot as an assistant U.S. attorney, in a recent interview with The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.

Most of them were convicted and spent time in jail.

Former Gazette reporter Jason Ryan, who wrote the 2011 book “Jackpot: High Times, High Seas and the Sting That Launched the War on Drugs,” told the Packet and Gazette recently that if there were victims of the crimes, it was the families of the defendants.

Daniel recalls seeing parents and grandparents in court. “It was heartbreaking, just heartbreaking,” he said.

Many of the convicted have reconstructed professional lives after doing their time, and Daniel said he admires them. Some are still scorned caustically by the kingpins for ratting on others.

Robert Leslie “Les” Riley refused to name names to authorities, and he served extra time for it.

Defense attorneys protested that the the government bought testimony by scaring defendants about life in prison or promising them lesser sentences if they spilled the beans. And attorneys protested that the only evidence Daniel had in many cases was the testimony of admitted crooks telling what supposedly happened six, eight or nine years earlier.

Daniel would respond that he was sorry, but no nuns were in on the smuggling ventures.

Hide and seek

Some of the smugglers fled before they were indicted.

Riley and Wallace E. “Wally” Butler Jr. skipped to Australia and were living in an upscale suburb of Sydney when they were nabbed. Riley tried to run, but didn’t get far. Butler was fishing when he was caught. They were jailed there for more than two years as they fought extradition.

Riley spent 17 years behind bars while his two young children grew up without him at home. Fellow kingpin Barry “Flash” Foy said Riley today lives on Fripp Island, and they talk regularly.

Butler was indicted as a kingpin, and his name was splashed endlessly in the newspapers as a mastermind behind hundreds of millions of dollars worth of drugs. But he really wasn’t, and a court agreed.

The kingpin charge was later dropped. He was sentenced to 20 years on lesser charges, but served less than three years in prison, then rebuilt his life in Beaufort County. In a 1992 story in The Island Packet, he talked about his passion for nature. He lived a quiet life before passing away in 2006 at age 74.

Foy also went on the lam.

Ryan’s book tells how IRS agent David Forbes chased Foy around the country for six months before apprehending him in March 1985. Foy was wearing a mink coat when he was caught with his wife and young children on a plane that had just landed in New York City from a ski trip.

“As the metal (handcuff) clasps swung shut and clicked,” Ryan wrote, “Foy’s 15-year career as a drug smuggler was over. He was three days short of his 34th birthday.”

Foy served more than 10 years in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. In his interview with the Packet and Gazette, he said he always asked for a street view.

“We would watch the hookers out the window,” he recalled. “We had names for them.”

This story was originally published August 22, 2017 at 11:06 AM with the headline "These Lowcountry drug smugglers fled to Australia when the feds came calling."