Pinoy to plead guilty to selling US spy plane on eBay

A Filipino is expected to plead guilty for trying to sell a US government-owned military spy plane over the Internet, news site Tampa Bay Online reported Wednesday (Thursday in Manila). The report said Henson Chua had illegally imported into the US a three-foot-long, hand-launched, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) RQ-11A/B “Raven" drone, after putting in on auction on eBay. Chua was arrested last February by US authorities for violating the country’s arms export and smuggling laws because the Raven is on the US munitions list of defensive items. According to the report, undercover agents contacted Chua who said he was representing the Raven’s owner who, in turn, had supposedly purchased it as “abandoned property" from a Philippine government auction. The special operations command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida had seen the spy plane listed for sale for $13,000 on eBay. They verified it as one of the command’s properties.

The undercover officers posed as agents of a Russian buyer and, while the sale was being negotiated, eBay removed the item from the site as it violated policies on the sale of military items. According to Tampa Bay Online, the sale was consummated in August 2010 even though “proper documents were never obtained." From the Philippines, Chua mailed the spy plane in two packages — first, the fuselage, and then the nose cone. “For unspecified reasons, Chua came to the US in February [this year] and was arrested," the report said. As part of a plea agreement, Chua is pleading guilty on Wednesday (Thursday, Manila time) to the illegal import of defense material, and faces up to 20 years in prison but will likely get less under federal guidelines. — MRT/KBK, GMA News