Team of contract killers led by ex-soldier 'Rambo' busted, prosecutors say

Chaiwat Subprasom / Reuters

Thai policemen escort an American drug suspect Joseph Hunter, 48, as he arrives at Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok September 27, 2013.

By Tracy Connor, Staff Writer, NBC News

A former Army sergeant nicknamed Rambo has been charged with recruiting globe-trotting hitmen to act as muscle for drug-traffickers in a scheme that prosecutors said could have been "ripped from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel."

"The charges tell a tale of an international band of mercenary marksmen who enlisted their elite military training to serve as hired guns for evils ends," said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

"Three of the defendants were ready, willing and eager to take cold hard cash to commit the cold-blooded murders of a DEA agent an an informant."

The ringleader was Joseph "Rambo" Hunter, 48, who served in the U.S. Army from 1983 to 2004, serving as a sniper instructor and senior drill sergeant, according to the indictment unsealed Friday.

After leaving the military, he launched a new career as a contract killer who "has arranged for the murders of multiple people," the court papers charge.

He allegedly used email to recruit four other ex-soldiers — from Puerto Rico, Germany and Poland — to provide security for a massive cocaine-smuggling operation that stretched from the Caribbean to Asia.

Hunter enlisted two of the men, German sniper Dennis "Nico" Gogel and U.S. Army veteran Timothy "Tay" Vamakias in what he called a "bonus job" — a plot to murder a Drug Enforcement Administration Agent and an informant in an unidentified African nation for $800,000.

Visas and plane tickets were obtained and sophisticated latex face masks, which could make someone appear to be of another race, were shipped to Africa for the assassination before Gogel and Vamakias flew there earlier this week, prosecutors said.

Investigators say Hunter thought he was working for a Colombian-based drug-trafficking organizations, but his contacts turned out to be confidential federal sources, who recorded their meetings.

The indictment portrays the men as blood-thirsty, quoting from an email in which Hunter said of his team, "They also, really want a bonus job after this next mission, if available."

During a conversation with one of the undercover sources in June, two of the men swapped ideas about how best to kill the DEA agent and the informant, including machine guns, cyanide or a grenade, authorities said.

During one meeting, Gogel, eagerly offered himself up for more "bonus jobs" in the future, the indictment says.

"That's fun, actually for me, that's fun," he was quoted as saying in court papers. "I love this work."

Prosecutors said an investigation spanning four continents "neutralized" Hunter, Gogel, Vamakias and their co-defendants, German-trained sniper Michael "Paul" Filter and Slawomir "Gerald" Soborski, a Polish counter-terrorism expert.

"The bone-chilling allegations in today's indictment read like they were ripped from the pages of a Tom Clancy novel," Bharara said in a statement.

This story was originally published on Fri Sep 27, 2013 12:52 PM EDT