José Irizarry, known as the DEA's most corrupt agent, used his final hours of freedom to tell his story, saying he won't go down alone.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — José Irizarry accepts that he's known as the most corrupt agent in U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration history, admitting he"became another man" in conspiring with Colombian cartels to build a lavish lifestyle of expensive sports cars, Tiffany jewels and paramours around the world.
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.
The expanding investigation comes as the nation's premier narcotics law enforcement agency has been rattled by repeated misconduct scandals in its 4,600-agent ranks, from one who took bribes from traffickers to another accused of leaking confidential information to law enforcement targets. But by far the biggest black eye is Irizarry, whose wholesale betrayal of the badge is at the heart of an ongoing external review of the DEA's sprawling foreign operations in 69 countries.
The Justice Department declined to comment. A DEA spokesperson said:"José Irizarry is a criminal who violated his oath as a federal law enforcement officer and violated the trust of the American people. Over the past 16 months, DEA has worked vigorously to further strengthen our discipline and hiring policies to ensure the integrity and effectiveness of our essential work."
Authorities are so focused on Zoumberos that they also subpoenaed his brother, a Florida wedding photographer who traveled and partied around the world with DEA agents, and even granted him immunity to induce his cooperation. But Michael Zoumberos also refused to testify and has been jailed outside Tampa since March for"civil contempt" — an exceedingly rare pressure tactic that underscores the rising temperature of the investigation.
Making Irizarry'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 Michele Leonhart, the DEA's administrator at the time.
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