[1] Brothers testified that he would fly as much as 600 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia to the Bahamas, then to Nashville, unload the bags into a van, then take them to his Belle Meade home.

[6] The junior Brothers attended Montgomery Bell Academy (MBA), a private Nashville prep school for boys.

[5] He was convicted in Florida's Broward County Circuit Court on October 24, 1988, on charges of racketeering, trafficking, and conspiracy to traffic in cocaine.

[10] According to Broward Circuit Judge Patti Englander Henning, Brothers' operation included bribing U.S. Customs officials.

[1] Approximately $6 million in real estate and other assets was confiscated in what authorities called the largest seizure of property in Florida's history at that time.

[1][11] It included a 248-acre farm near Nashville, a restaurant, two airplanes, two boats, a $600,000 loan to a ranch in Limestone County, Texas, and an aircraft-chartering firm.

Federal prosecutors contended that Nebel invested more than $5 million of Brothers' drug-smuggling profits and then lied to investigators when asked about his role in the case.

[15] Nebel was offered immunity from prosecution if he would testify as to Brothers' criminal activities, including setting up companies that received drug money.

[17][18][19] Also in 1992, Russell Brothers offered substantial assistance to prosecutors, including testifying and giving information in the federal prosecution of another accused drug trafficker, Allan Ross.

[22][23] After a dispute occurred when payment was delayed, Brothers was seen on surveillance cameras absconding with the partner's $300,000 airplane from Nashville's John C. Tune Airport.

After mechanical trouble, he crash-landed his 1961 vintage twin-engine Beechcraft airplane without landing gear on a grassy area at the closed and decommissioned Cornelia Fort Airpark, now a city park in Nashville.

[27] Brothers pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to the weapons charge and also to obstruction of a federal investigation, receiving a 15-month jail sentence.