DEA agent abroad stole millions

[Mystic Wanderer]

(Shaking my head).  Put a good man in a position of power and it will corrupt him... eventually, if he thinks he can get away with it. This seems to be what happened to this 'star' DEA agent. When a person thinks they aren't suspected of wrongdoing, they'll take advantage. At least that's how it appears in this case.

MIAMI — A U.S. federal narcotics agent known for his expensive tastes and high-profile drug seizures has been implicated in a multimillion-dollar money-laundering conspiracy that involved the very cartel criminals he was charged with fighting in Colombia.

A once standout Drug Enforcement Administration agent, Jose Irizarry is accused of conspiring with a longtime DEA informant to launder more than $7 million in illicit drug proceeds, sometimes using an underground network known as the black-market peso exchange, according to five current and former law enforcement officials.

The officials described the case as one of the biggest black eyes in the history of the DEA, an agency that has seen repeated scandals in recent years, and one they fear could have compromised undercover operations in the U.S. and South America.
The conspiracy not only allegedly enriched Irizarry but is believed to have benefited one of South America’s top money launderers, who is a relative of Irizarry’s Colombian wife, said the officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the federal investigation.

The allegations have sent shockwaves through the DEA and drawn new scrutiny to the agency’s Colombia field office, a critical outpost that has been steeped in turmoil in recent years. The division has seen internal strife and turnover in leadership even as it grapples with record-high levels of cocaine production.

Tell me, is there ANY government office that hasn't been compromised with corruption over the past few decades?  Or, maybe I should go back even further to when JFK was assassinated.  I believe that's when the dirty crooks took over our government.

A DEA spokeswoman said Irizarry resigned from the agency after he was recalled from Colombia to Washington in 2017 but declined further comment.

When word of the scandal reached Washington that year, the FBI and Justice Department dispatched investigators to Colombia to conduct criminal and internal inquiries, fearing that it could backfire on the DEA’s ability to keep the trust of sources in the criminal underworld, the law enforcement officials said.

The case raises new questions about the DEA’s screening practices in its hiring of special agents. Irizarry was hired by the DEA despite indications he showed signs of deception in a polygraph exam he took upon admission, three of the law enforcement officials said.

There were other red flags. In 2010, Irizarry declared bankruptcy with debts of almost $500,000, but he was nevertheless permitted to handle financial transactions in his role at the DEA.

Before he was exposed, Irizarry had been a model agent, the law enforcement officials said, winning praise from his supervisors. Based out of Miami, he won special permission to set up an undercover operation to send money and ship contraband merchandise to Colombia on behalf of suspected drug traffickers using front companies, shell bank accounts and couriers.

His investigations led to scores of drug arrests, earning him an early-career transfer to a coveted foreign posting in the Colombian resort city of Cartagena, where his successes continued.
“He was the superstar everyone wanted to be,” one former law enforcement official said.

Reminds me of Jack Bauer on the hit t.v. show 24 a few years ago.  I'm enjoying the reruns now on Hulu.  

It goes on to talk about his lavish lifestyle, yet no investigation was opened on him. 

Skipping ahead...

Irizarry’s undoing came when he was caught stealing from police informants and interfering in legitimate law-enforcement actions. Among the missteps was an $87,000 wire transfer destined for a trafficker in Cali that mysteriously went missing. Irizarry didn’t know the trafficker was an informant for the Miami-Dade money-laundering strike force, which complained to the Justice Department, leading to Yabrudi’s arrest last year.

Around the same time, the law enforcement officials said, an Internal Revenue Service agent flagged to the DEA what he considered a suspicious phone call Irizarry made trying to reverse the seizure of a container of commercial goods. Later, the officials said, it was learned that he had also been falsifying DEA paperwork used to pay informants — pocketing the money for himself.

Source

Over-confidence causes one to get sloppy I suppose.

There is nothing I hate more than a crooked official who arrests people imposing a possible life sentence in prison, when they themselves are guilty of much worse.  I hate a hypocrite!  

I hope he gets life in prison too.  Karma can be a bitch!