Miami attorneys bankrolled DEA bribery scheme, federal prosecutors say
Federal prosecutors are expanding their investigation into a bribery scheme involving two former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration supervisors, turning their attention to two Miami defense attorneys suspected of profiting from repeated leaks of confidential DEA information
MIAMI (AP) — Federal prosecutors are expanding their investigation into a bribery scheme involving two former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration supervisors, turning their attention to two Miami defense attorneys suspected of profiting from repeated leaks of confidential DEA information.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan filed court papers Monday accusing the lawyers of bankrolling the scheme and asking a judge to allow prosecutors to review nearly 1,000 emails, text messages and recordings of protected phone calls between the attorneys and Manny Recio, a former DEA agent who later worked for the attorneys as a private investigator.
Attorneys' communications with their clients and members of their investigative team are confidential and typically off limits from law enforcement, unless they are being used to carry out criminal activity. But federal prosecutors took the unusual step this week of asking a judge to invoke the “crime fraud exception" to this privilege, calling the communications between Recio and attorneys David Macey and Luis Guerra “integral to the bribery scheme."
The motion marked an about-face for prosecutors, who for years went out of their way to avoid naming the lawyers as unindicted co-conspirators and beneficiaries of the conspiracy. Neither Macey nor Guerra has been charged, but prosecutors referred to them as “crooked attorneys” who “paid handsomely for DEA secrets” during the two-week trial that ended with a jury finding Recio and former DEA agent John Costanzo Jr. guilty of bribery and honest-services wire fraud.
