By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com How much would you pay to make the threat of drug charges go away? Would you pay if you knew you were innocent? These questions were not hypothetical for many. TMZ reports that Americans buying prescription drugs online have been the target of scammers posing as DEA agents. The phony agents…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com Patricia Gonzalez has worked for years with US officials on combatting and prosecuting drug violence. Last fall, Gonzalez, the Mexican state of Chihuahua’s top state prosecutor, watched helplessly as the media reported on her brother Mario’s kidnapping and torture at the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Mario was forced to record…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com The tension between effective law enforcement and personal privacy is always present to some degree, but has certainly intensified in the decade following 9/11. Now, a bipartisan group including former FBI and DEA leaders are calling for new safeguards to protect individuals’ personal privacy. The Constitution Project, a D.C.-based think tank,…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com If a counternarcotics official from another nation profits from trafficking cocaine into the United States, but has a clean criminal record otherwise, should a judge go lenient at sentencing? That’s what Rene Sanabria is hoping. Sanabria headed a Bolivian drug intelligence unit, but was arrested earlier this year by the DEA…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com Earlier this week the Portland Police Bureau Drugs and Vice Division (DVD) and the DEA received information about a large amount of drugs headed to Portland. On Wednesday, officers raided three area homes in what the police department described as its biggest drug bust ever. Officers found “28 pound of heroin, 2 pounds…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com Dawn Strobel was working as a DEA agent with a local High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area in 2006 in Indiana when a colleague outed her as gay to her boss, William Wells, according to the Post-Tribune newspaper. Wells then told the Army Reserves, where Strobel had served since 2001. The Reserves…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Fed prosecutors in Chicago are denying claims that a major Mexican cartel member had struck a deal with the DEA granting him immunity and others prosecution from immunity in exchange for information, Reuters news service reported. Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla, the son of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, the right-hand man of Sinaloa…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com DEA Public Affairs Specialist David Ausiello is making a switch. Ausiello has been named Assistant Director for Communication and Law Enforcement Coordination at the Executive Office for the U.S. Attorneys. “Staying in the DOJ family…but moving up, over, and out,” Ausiello said in an email to members of the media on…
