DEA's most corrupt agent: Parties, sex amid 'unwinnable war'
José Irizarry accepted that he's known as the most corrupt agent in US Drug Enforcement Administration history and admitted to colluding with a cartel in Colombia to launder money.
Not surprised by this story at all but reinforces my confirmation bias that this agency should be added to the list of other alphabets needing to be defunded.
“The disgraced former narcotics agent met with The Associated Press for a series of interviews before he headed to prison this week, revealing that he wasn't going down for this alone, accusing some long-trusted DEA colleagues of joining him in skimming millions of dollars from drug money laundering stings to fund a decade's worth of luxury overseas travel, fine dining, top seats at sporting events and frat house-style debauchery.
According to Irizarry, dozens of other federal agents, prosecutors, informants, and in some cases cartel smugglers themselves were all in on the three-continent joyride known as 'Team America' that chose cities for money laundering pick-ups mostly for party purposes or to coincide with Real Madrid soccer or Rafael Nadal tennis matches.
They partied in VIP rooms of Caribbean strip joints, Amsterdam's red-light district, and aboard a Colombianp yacht that launched with plenty of booze and more than a dozen prostitutes.
'We had free access to do whatever we wanted,' Irizarry said. 'We would generate money pick-ups in places we wanted to go. And once we got there it was about drinking and girls.'
All this revelry was rooted, Irizarry said, in a crushing realization among DEA agents around the world that there's nothing they can do to make a dent in the drug war anyway.
Only nominal concern was given to actually building cases or stemming a record flow of illegal cocaine and opioids into the United States that has driven more than 100,000 drug overdose deaths a year.
'You can't win an unwinnable war,' he said. 'The drug war is a game. ... It was a very fun game that we were playing.'
