Four crewmen from a semisubmarine captured in June pleaded guilty today to federal drug charges.

Four crewmen from a semisubmarine captured in June pleaded guilty today to federal drug charges.The crewmen were aboard the third semisub interdicted this year. The 50- to 60-foot vessel was spotted June 16 by a Marine patrol unit in the eastern Pacific northwest of the Ecuador-Colombia border.By the time the Coast Guard arrived, the sub's crew members were in the water and the vessel was sinking, a federal prosecutor has said. Crew members later told investigators they were instructed to scuttle the vessel after they spotted an airplane circling overhead. Guardsmen managed to get some bales of cocaine out of the sub before it slipped into the sea.Crew members told agents the vessel had 6 to 8 tons of cocaine onboard that was to be delivered to a Mexican fishing vessel 700 miles off the coast of Colombia, according to plea agreements signed by the four defendants.One of the crew members told agents he was paid 40 million pesos, or about $23,500; another said he was paid 30 million pesos or about $17,625.One of the crewmen told investigators he asked someone he knew who was involved in construction of the vessels in Buenaventura, Colombia, for work. He was sent to Cali, Colombia, where a man named Ritchie gave him a bag containing 30 million pesos. He returned to Buenaventura, where he was eventually taken to an estuary off the coast of Colombia, where he was told he would be part of a crew that would make a delivery 700 miles off the coast.
All four defendants are expected to plead guilty to a charge of conspiracy to possess more than 5 kilograms of cocaine with the intent to distribute, a charge that carries a prison sentence of 10 years to life.Crew members of other semisubs who have been sentenced have received prison terms ranging from nine years to 17 years, six months.