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The high life

A broker makes a killing, mellows out at the beach. Nothing odd about that, except the product was pot. Tons.

By PAUL SWIDER
Published April 23, 2006

One of St. Pete Beach's most infamous sons, Lamb sees himself as an outlaw and a benefactor, a criminal and a hero. Best known as one of the Steinhatchee Seven, Lamb spent 35 years smuggling marijuana but also helping people he met along the way.

"We were the Robin Hoods of the day," said Lamb, 53, who has holed up for two years in a waterfront cottage in Treasure Island to write a book about his exploits, The Smuggler's Ghost.

For years, he was a ghost to his hometown of St. Pete Beach, having spent nine years in prison and even more time living abroad as a fugitive from justice.

He brokered shipments of tons of grass from Colombia and Venezuela and Jamaica. He would slip into town from time to time, see some friends and then slip back out, half a step ahead of the law. He made an uncountable fortune, he said, but gave most of it away. All he has left are his stories, but what stories they are, romantic and dangerous and foolish and scrambled.

Lamb was one of the Steinhatchee Seven, a group of young men arrested in 1973 with 9 tons of marijuana.

At the time, it was the largest marijuana bust in the country. It was bigger, Lamb said, more like 13 tons, but they'd already off-loaded some of it in Clearwater on their way up the coast. It was the first time they had used a shrimp boat to transport in bulk, and it was the last time they didn't have a clean plan for arrival.

"We got busted because we didn't have an unload," he said. For two days, the crew shoveled bales onto skiffs and dumped them on an island at the river's mouth. They were slowly moving the marijuana to waiting semitrailer trucks when the police found them. "That's a lot of unloading."

Steinhatchee was a kind of watershed but in unexpected ways. The seven went to prison but served less than two years. From then on, the law watched closely. But so did everyone else.

"Busting us was the worst thing the feds could have done," Lamb said. "It opened the eyes of all the fishermen."

Others tried to worm into the business, but Lamb and his cohorts had an exclusive arrangement in Jamaica. He became the go-to guy for what turned into an extremely lucrative business.

"I was flying out of Albert Whitted two or three times a week," he said. "I had a lot of offers."

The money had been good leading up to Steinhatchee, but afterward, as he brokered deals for others, it got very good. Lamb said he had made half a million dollars by the time he was busted, not bad for the '70s and a 20-year-old who paid a friend in marijuana to pass the GED for him. But between his March arrest and his trial later that year, Lamb said he made another $3-million.

"It was a perfect time to be alive and young and healthy and wealthy," he said. "The fish bit better, the beer was colder and the girls were prettier."

Lamb started like any young entrepreneur, hanging with the bigger fish and learning the trade. A surf rat, he met some Californians in the mid '60s and learned about pot. He soon was selling to his friends at Boca Ciega High School and earning more money in a few days than his single mother, who waited tables, did in a couple of weeks.

A few years later, Lamb and a friend he names some names in the book but guards others went to Iowa to harvest hemp from World War II-era fields and sell it at Woodstock. Others followed from Florida and soon, he said, the state was full of "funk pot."

Later Lamb spent a few months in California transporting Mexican weed to Hawaii and surfing. The money kept getting better. He said he gave some to his mother, paid off her medical bills for a cancer surgery, and took a trip to the Bahamas.

He hopped on an island mail boat and made the rounds of the Caribbean before disembarking in Kingston, Jamaica, then a backwater. A street vendor offered him some marijuana for less than a 10th of what he paid for bulk back home. It was better than funk pot and sold like crazy when he got back to the beach.

So Lamb and some others loaded extra gas cans in an open-hulled, 25-foot flat-bottom mullet boat, the first Smiley, and headed back to Jamaica. That they made it is amazing, but they also met their Jamaican partner, who controlled the fertile mountain fields and became their exclusive connection. They made him rich, he made them rich, and the locals made more money than ever before, especially after Lamb taught them how to grow potent seedless marijuana.

That first trip they moved 1,400 pounds and netted $250,000. They soon had investors, and the loads and profits grew.

"People who were mainstays of the community were putting up the money for these guys," said Charles Fuss, who worked for the U.S. Fisheries Service at the time but helped law enforcement because of his knowledge of how fishermen could be smugglers. "A lot of businesses that are there now got started with money from back then."

Fuss, who wrote a book about smugglers, Sea of Grass, wouldn't reveal names of investors, but he said the attraction was too strong for many people to pass up. The St. Pete Beach resident said the smugglers were "overwhelmed with money" and had a hard time storing the cash without rats eating it. Rumor is, there are still bundles buried on islands around Tierra Verde, where most of the early off-loading took place. The smugglers also gave money away.

"They did all sorts of charitable things for people," Fuss said. He betrays a certain respect for the pot smugglers, who he said were generally adventure-seeking kids, not violent criminals like those who transported cocaine.

Lamb says the marijuana smugglers were preserving their karma. If they were hungry on a trip and took a lobster out of a trap, they'd replace it with a $100 bill. If a neighbor needed a washing machine or a new truck, there it was. The Jamaicans would load a boat on credit, but always got paid on the next trip.

"We did business on a handshake and a kiss," he said.

It was illegal business, to be sure, and Lamb felt that pain. After Steinhatchee, he was busted again on cocaine possession and heroin charges, but he says those were exceptions and mistakes, that he only trafficked in grass. Still, he did real prison time in Florida and California. And he spent years living away from friends and family with fake passports and assumed names directing deals from afar.

"Once I took off, I had to keep smuggling," he said.

Overseas, he was a hero to the locals he helped enrich. He invested in a Venezuelan ranch and a Colombian condo. He rebuilt the village church. He sometimes worked closely with authorities in those countries, where the business was welcomed. He was monitoring multiple shipments at different ports all the time.

"They were a real bunch of characters," Fuss said, "but these guys could have been CEOs."

Now Lamb is left with only his tales. He's under the wing of Trevor Hanson, a Treasure Island entrepreneur and son-in-law of Everett Rice, who was one of those who used to chase Lamb.

The smuggler does some fishing but mostly recounts his adventures for Hanson as they finish the book, shop for a publisher, and work on a screenplay and a Web site, www.thesmugglersghost.com.

"I feel like I've lived it, too," said Hanson, 33, who said he's almost a father figure to Lamb because Lamb never had to be responsible these past few decades. "It's the hardest job I ever had. Sometimes I want to pull my hair out, but it's been worth it."

Rice, the former Pinellas sheriff, said he remembers Lamb and the others, though Lamb was on the lam during much of Rice's investigative career. He said he has met Lamb since his return but hasn't had a chance to debrief him.

"If you talk to him for a couple hours, you'll probably know more about them than I ever did," he said. Rice said the pot smugglers were nothing to be afraid of.

"I don't think they even carried guns," he said. "They were never violent. They were just a bunch of beach boys, but they got away with quite a few loads."

To look at Lamb, it's hard to imagine him a criminal. He still looks boyish, if weathered, and is quick with a smile and laugh. He can't lift his right shoulder properly, but when he says that's because of a prison guard's rough treatment, it seems out of place. When he says he was just having fun smuggling drugs, it sounds legitimate.

"I know I'm not a bad guy," he said. "We didn't use guns. It was all peace and love. People were proud to be marijuana smugglers in the '70s."

Paul Swider can be reached at 892-2271 or pswider@sptimes.com or by participating in itsyourtimes.com.

[Last modified April 23, 2006, 11:10:40]