Beyond The Horizon
ICYMI: A Corrupt DEA Agent Points The Finger Back At The Agency (Part 2)
The DEA has had it's share of controversies in it's history and it has also had it's share of embarrassments because of those controversies. In todays episode we hear from a disgraced agent who has some very, very concerning things to say about his colleagues and how the corruption didn't stop or start with him.
Let's check it out.
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to contact me:
bobbycapucci@protonmail.com
source:
https://lasvegassun.com/news/2022/nov/14/deas-most-corrupt-agent-parties-sex-amid-unwinnabl/
- Duration:
- 22m
- Broadcast on:
- 22 Jun 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
At your job, do you ever have to deal with a nose roller? How about a snub bully? Well, if you're installing a new conveyor belt system, dealing with the different components can sound like you're speaking a foreign language. Luckily, you've got a team ready to help. Granger's technical product specialists are fluent in maintenance, repair, and operations. So whenever you want to talk shop, just reach out. Call clickgranger.com or just stop by. Granger, for the ones who get it done. What's up, everyone? And welcome back to the program. We're going to finish off the last article we were talking about, about the corrupt DEA agent and, well, an overall corrupt DEA. This article was authored by Jim Mustian and Josh Goodman with contributions from RT's Para and Chris Majerian. And it was published by the AP. All right, let's dive right back in and pick up where we left off. Some current and former DEA agents say, "Irazari's claims are overblown," or "flat out fabrications." The former ICE agent scoffed at Irazari's accusation. He took a $20,000 bribe, saying he raised early red flags about Irazari. And the lawyer for the Zombaro's brothers, say prosecutors are on a fishing expedition to bring more indictments because of the embarrassment of the Irazari scandal. Well, would you have us believe that Mr. Irazari is doing this all on his own, and he was this gigantic player in the DEA who was able to pull all these levers on his own? Because it seems to me he was just a case agent and not some big wig hotshot. Everybody they connect to Jose is extraneous to his thefts. Said attorney, Raymond, Mansalilo, they're looking to find a crime to fit this case as opposed to a crime that actually took place. But no matter what happens, they're going to charge somebody with something because they don't wanna come out of all of this after five years and only have charged Jose. So they're trying to set it up as a fishing expedition, like he said. The government has nothing here. They're trying to save face, and they're gonna go after people who weren't even involved in an attempt to do so. Making Irazari's allegations more egregious is that they came on the heels of a 2015 Inspector General's report that slammed DEA agents for participating in sex parties with prostitutes hired by Colombian cartels. That prompted the suspension of several agents and the retirement of Michelle Leonhardt, the DEA's administrator at the time. So look, this isn't out of left field, right? This isn't out of the blue. This isn't something that's never happened before. The DEA and a lot of their agents have been in bed with cartel members, have been in bed with narco terrorist groups for years and years and years and years. And when one of these guys gets caught inevitably, they start flapping their gums about the other people who are involved because who wants to go down on their own? Nobody's trying to go down with the ship. What is this, the Titanic? I'm gonna sit here and play the violin while this ship sinks. Hell no, I'm diving off. Let me get in one of them boats. Central to the Irazari investigation are overly cozy relationships developed between agents and informants, strictly forbidden under federal guidelines. And loose controls on the DEA's under cover drug money, laundering operations that few Americans no exist. And this is what I talk about on a regular basis and people think I'm crazy, but the fact is this, the government has an extensive group of informants, an extensive group of very, very undesirable people that they work with. And they're using laundered money, they're using black operations, they're using operations that are off the books. Nobody knows about any of this, there's no oversight. So we have no idea what they're even up to. And if you wanna trust them to do that, that's perfectly fine. I'm not gonna sit here and talk down to you because you wanna trust the institutions or anything like that. For me, I think that it's my position, my place, just to make people aware that this shit is going on. And then after you're aware of it, it's up to you to decide what you think or how you're going to proceed. But for me personally, I have a big problem with groups like the DEA who get out here and live so self-righteously. Get out here and raid people's houses with no-knock warrants, seize people's property over some crack or whatever. And meanwhile, they're all living high on the hog off of the very same kind of funds. So I don't know how people can have a problem with that or don't have a problem with that. You wanna talk about absolutely unconstitutional and completely shitting on your charter. That's what's going on here. And get ready for this one, folks. You ready? You sitting down? Okay, here it comes. Every year, the DEA londers tens of millions of dollars on behalf of the world's most violent drug cartels through shell companies. A tactic touted in long-running overseas investigations, such as Operation Whitewash, that resulted in more than 100 arrests and seizures of more than 100 million and a ton of cocaine. Oh, one whole ton, huh? We just talked about a story of 20 tons being nailed. So are you comfortable with the DEA running money laundering operations? That's whitewashing this money and sending it back out into these cartels and you need to tell me that you trust these agents implicitly and there's gonna be no corruption with all of that money coming in and no oversight? I'm sorry, but that's a bridge too far for me. And I'm not gonna sit here and tell you every agent's corrupt but it only takes a few of them. It only takes a few people to get involved in a scam, a plot like this and then what? The whole entire thing comes down and the agency itself looks terrible because they didn't stop it, even when they knew what was going on. But the DEA has also faced criticism for following huge amounts of money in the operations to go unceased, enabling cartels to continue applying their trade and for failing to tightly monitor and track the stings, making it difficult to evaluate results. It's a stupid process, a stupid idea. We shouldn't be laundering money for the cartels or helping them launder money at all. And inevitably, it'll backfire like everything else. A 2020 Justice Department Inspector General's report faulted the DEA for failing since at least 2006 to file annual reports to Congress about these stings known as Attorney General Exempted Operations. Why is there anything called an Attorney General Exempted Operation in the first place? This is the biggest issue. You know, we're out here fighting about who's a Republican, who's a Democrat, who's this, who's that, and all of this shit is going on right under our noses. And none of us are aware of it and none of us are even hip to the fact that we have some real bad ombres, if you will, working in places like the DEA. That rebuke, coupled with the embarrassment, brought on by Irazari's confession, prompt a DEA administrator and Milgram to order an outside review of the agency's foreign operations, which is ongoing. Oh, spare me with the investigations. Now, all these hearings we hear on Congress, Washington, DC, no hearing about this, how about a full-on public hearing? Oh, they won't do that, will they? Because if they really expose what's going on for the masses within the world of the war on drugs, everybody would be as fired up and pissed off as we all are. [BLANK_AUDIO] In the vast majority of these operations, nobody is watching, said Bonnie Clapper, a former federal prosecutor in New York, an outspoken critic of the DEA money laundering. In the Irazari operation, nobody cared how much money they were laundering, nobody cared that they were making any cases, nobody was minding the house. There were no controls, because there are no controls. It's a runaway bureaucracy that is way too fat, way too bloated, and they are way off their charter. The DEA's in 69 countries, they can't even stop fentanyl from coming in this country. Rob Fettel, another former federal prosecutor, said the DEA's lax oversight made it easy to divert funds for all kinds of unapproved purposes, and as long as money seizures kept driving stats higher, a low bar given abundant supply, few questions were asked. The other agents aren't stupid, they knew there were no controls, and a lot of them could have done what Irazari did, said Fettel, who represents a former DEA agent, under scrutiny in the inquiry. The line that separates Irazari from the others is he did it with both hands, and he did it over and over and over. He didn't just test the waters, he took a full bath in it. So even if you test the waters, you shouldn't be taking any ill-gotten gains as a DEA agent. I mean, I would think that that's pretty remedial, but here we are. Irazari, who speaks in a smooth pattern that seamlessly switches between English and Spanish, was a federal air marshal and border patrol agent before joining the DEA in 2009. He said he learned the tricks of the trade as a DEA rookie from veteran cops who came up in New York City in the '90s when cocaine flooded American streets. You wanna watch a good movie about this? Go and watch American gangster with Denzel Washington and Russell Crow. Now obviously keep in mind it's just a movie, but it gives you an oversight of kind of what that was like in the old days in New York, the war on drugs, before there was even really a DEA and how they were going after and pursuing these drug dealers at that time. But the DEA now is just so bloated and everything that they do is just, I don't know man, do we really need the DEA? I guess that's the real question we're getting at here. But another key part of his education came from Diego Marin, a longtime US informant known to investigators as Columbia's contraband king, for allegedly laundering dope money through imported appliances and other goods. Irazari said Marin taught him better than any agent could, the nuances of the black market peso exchange used by narco traffickers across the world. Irazari parlayed this knowledge into a life of luxury that prosecutors say was bankrolled by nine million dollars, he and his Colombian co-conspirators, diverted from money laundering investigations. So while they're investigating these laundering operations, they're engaging in one at the same time. And the black market peso exchange, kind of like a black market exchange, exactly what it says. Where things are going on behind the scenes with the cartels, there's a whole other economy going on that these dudes are managing. And it all is based on money laundering. To further the scheme, Irazari filed false reports and ordered DEA staff to wire money slated for undercover stings to international accounts he and his associates controlled. Hardened informants who kept a hefty commission from every cash transfer sanctioned by the DEA, also stepped in to fund some of the revelry and what amounted to illegal kickbacks. So he had his hand in the cookie jar. In fact, he had both hands in the cookie jar. And again, the question is, how many other agents are doing the same thing right now? Irazari's spending habits quickly began to mimic the ostentatious taste of the narcos he was tasked with targeting, with spoils including a $30,000 Tiffany diamond ring for his wife, luxury sports cars and a $767,000 home in the Colombian resort city of Cartagena. He traveled first class to Europe with Louis Vuitton luggage and wearing a gold Hublot watch. Now, imagine doing all of this and doing it so brazenly on the salary of a federal agent. Well, you don't think nobody's paying attention, homie? And guess what? For all these years, nobody was. I was very good at what I did, but I became somebody I wasn't. I became a different man. Irazari said, I got caught up in the lifestyle. I got caught up in the informants and partying. And look, I could see how that could happen. You show up here, you're looking to do good work and before you know it, all this money's in your face, all these women, all of this temptation. So you have to be a special kind of person to take a job like this. Irazari contends as many as 90% of his group's work trips were bogus, dictated for partying and sporting events, not real work. And he says the US government money that helped pay for it was justified in reports as case related, but that's a very vague term. So we know that this is happening. We know that agents are using this money, but to what extent? I guess that's where the discussion will revolve. But if Mr. Irazari here has anything to tell us, there's a lot going on and there is a big problem with corruption inside of the DEA. Case in point, in August 2014, tripped a Madrid for the Spanish Super Cup soccer finals that was charged as an expense to Operation Whitewash. But Irazari told investigators there was little actual work to be done other than courtesy calls to a few friendly Spanish cops. Instead, he said agents enjoyed their time, dining at pricey restaurants, racking up a 1,000 euro bill at one, and enjoying field-side seats at the championship match between Real and Atletico Madrid. Nah, must be nice. Out here stealing money, supposed to be going after drug dealers, instead eating $1,000 meals, rocking Hublot watches, and going to the ballgame. Soaking up the last bit of Spanish culture before saying adios, he posted a few days later outside a pub. Irazari alleged that Garifola also joined agents, cartel informants, and others in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo in 2004, for a night at a strip club called the Dollhouse. In a memo to the court seeking a reduction in his sentences, Irazari recalled being in the VIP room with another agent, and Garifola, racking up a $2,300 bill paid for by a violent emissary of Marin with a menacing nickname to match. Oguana, I don't know how menacing the name of Guana is. Have you ever seen an Oguana? What's the word that's gonna do? Smack you with its tail? Menacing nickname. Garifola said the trips included official business, and he assumed everything was being paid out of the DEA funds. There were things about those trips that made me question why I was there. Garifola told AP. But Irazari totally used me to ratify this behavior. I was brand new, and green, and eager to work money laundering cases. He used me by just being there. Oh, poor guy. So you think that you should be in a position of power in the DEA if you're so easily massaged and maneuvered into doing what other people want? When Irazari was awarded with a transfer to Cartagena in 2015, the party followed. The agent's rooftop pool with sweeping ocean views became an obligatory stop for visiting agents and prosecutors from the US. So don't act like you didn't know. All these prosecutors that were there, all these agents, you weren't making this money on an agent's salary? One that Irazari recalls seeing there was Marissa Darden, a prosecutor from Cleveland who he says, "Travelled to Columbia in September, 2017, "and was at gatherings where he witnessed "two DEA agents taking ecstasy." Irazari says he didn't see Darden taking drugs. Federal authorities have taken a keen interest in that party, quizzing Irazari about it as recently as this summer. At least one DEA agent who attended it has been placed on administrative leave, so there's obviously something there. And what Irazari is telling us, there is obviously smoke and fire here. Darden went on to become a partner in a high-powered Cleveland law firm and last year was nominated by President Joe Biden to be the first black woman US attorney in Northern Ohio. But soon after she was confirmed, Darden abruptly withdrew in May, citing only the importance of prioritizing family. Are you guys paying attention yet? You know, all the people out there, "Oh, you know, we're gonna do things differently "with a new president on board." No, they're not. Okay, same shit, same kind of people. Why would Darden, who is under this investigation, even be nominated for this position? Darden refused to answer questions from the AP, but her attorney said in a statement that she cooperated fully with the federal investigation into alleged illegal activity by federal agents. An inquiry separate from the FBI background check she faced in the confirmation process. There is no evidence that she participated in any illegal activity. Darden's attorney, James Woolley, wrote in an email to AP, not just hanging out at a corrupt agents house, no big deal. A White House official said the allegations did not come up in the vetting process. And a US Senate, Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who put Darden's name up for the post was also unaware of the allegations in the nomination process, his office said, and had he known, he would have withdrawn his support. So, what is the White House doing in the first place? You don't know these allegations, so what she goes up for confirmation, and you let the other side absolutely land baster? Here's an idea, do your due diligence. Another federal prosecutor, named by Irazari, and questioned by federal agents was Monique Botero, who was recently promoted to head of the Narcotics Division at the US Attorney's Office in Miami. Irazari told investigators and the AP that Botero joined a group of agents, informants, Colombian police, and prostitutes for a party on a luxury yacht. I'm sure she was there for business purposes. Come on, folks, this is the DEA we're talking about here. Botero's lawyers acknowledged she was on the yacht in September 2015 for what she thought was a cruise organized by local police, but they say categorically and unequivocally, Monique never saw or participated in anything illegal or unethical. So the second you get on the boat and you find out it's not what you thought it was, why'd you stay? Oh, no answers for that, not even a question, huh? Okay, makes sense. Irazari has admitted that he lied to everyone around him for various nefarious reasons. These lies about Monique are part of a similar pattern, said her attorney Benjamin Greenberg. It is appalling that Monique is being maligned and defamed by someone as disgraced as Irazari will guess what? Before he was disgraced, he was an honored member of the same group that your client is. So why don't we take a step back here and look at things and focus their Mr. lawyer guy, Benjamin Greenberg. Irazari's downfall was as sudden as it was inevitable. The outgrowth of a lavish lifestyle that raised too many eyebrows, even among colleagues willing to bend the rules themselves. Eventually he was betrayed by one of his close confidants, a Venezuelan-American informant who confessed to diverting funds from the undercover stings. Jose's problem is that he took things to the point of stupidity and trashed the party for everyone else, said one defense attorney who traveled with Irazari and other agents, but there's no doubt he didn't act alone. Since his arrest, Irazari has written a self-published book titled "Getting Back on Track," part of the attempt to own up to his mistakes and pursue a simpler path after bringing so much shame upon himself and family. Recently, his Colombian-born wife, who was spared jail time on a money laundering charge in exchange for Irazari's confession, told him she was seeking a divorce, and this is what they'll do. They'll go after your family members, your wife, your kids, and they'll try and force you to confess. Adding to Irazari's despair is that he is still the only one to pay such a heavy price for a pattern of misconduct that he says the DEA allowed to fester. To date, prosecutors have yet to charge any other agents and several former colleagues have quietly retired that endure the disgrace of possibly being fired. I've told them everything I know, Irazari said. All they have to do is dig. Now the question is, will they dig? And letting people retire like this, that's the coward's way out. They should be forced to face their embarrassment for their alleged role here. But no, we'll just let them retire and we'll just forget about it and hope it all goes away. Well, guess what, it's not gonna go away. And hopefully, as we move forward here, we get more information from Mr. Irazari and we learn more about the people who are allegedly involved, but one thing is clear. A group like the DEA is certainly not above reproach and they need to be audited and they need to be looked after by a committee with oversight in a very, very close and stringent manner because if not, you're gonna see more stuff like this start to come out because guess what, it's happening. All right, folks, that's gonna do it for this one. If you'd like to contact me, you can do that at bobbykapucci@protonmail.com. That's B-O-B-B-Y-C-A-P-U-C-C-I at protonmail.com. You can also find me on Twitter at B-O-B-B-Y_C-A-P-U-C-C-I. The link that I discussed can be found in the description box.