So notorious are the exploits of former Soviet air force officer Viktor Bout that they have inspired a Hollywood film and garnered him an impressively fearsome nickname - the "merchant of death".
Yet he claims he is simply an entrepreneur with a legitimate international transport business, wrongly accused of trying to arm South American rebels - the victim of US political machinations.
Thailand's authorities have now agreed to extradite him to the US, so an American court may have to decide where the truth lies.
Mr Bout began his career in air transport in the early 1990s, after the fall of the USSR.
According to a 2007 book - Merchant of Death, by security experts Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun - Mr Bout built up his business using military planes left on the airfields of the collapsing Soviet empire in the early 1990s.
Diamonds, guns and militants
The sturdy Antonovs and Ilyushins were up for sale along with their crews, and were perfect for delivering goods to bumpy wartime airstrips around the world.
Mr Bout, 43, who was born in Soviet-ruled Tajikistan, is said have begun channelling weapons through a series of front companies to war-torn parts of Africa.
The UN named him as an associate of former Liberian President Charles Taylor - who is now on trial for war crimes.
"[Bout is a] businessman, dealer and transporter of weapons and minerals [who] supported former President Taylor's regime in [an] effort to destabilise Sierra Leone and gain illicit access to diamonds," UN documents state.
Media reports in the Middle East claim he was a gun-runner for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
He is also alleged to have armed both sides in Angola's civil war and supplied weapons to warlords and governments from the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo to Sudan and Libya.
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