DEA’s Most Corrupt Agent: Parties, Sex Amid ‘Unwinnable War’

Jose Irizarry admits he is known as the most corrupt agent in the history of the US Drug Enforcement Administration, admitting that he “became a different person” in a plot with Colombian cartels to build a lavish lifestyle with expensive sports cars, jewelry of Tiffany and lovers around the world.

But as he uses his final hours of freedom to tell his story to The Associated Press, Irizarry says he won’t go it alone, accusing some long-trusted DEA colleagues of joining him in skimming off millions of dollars from laundering drug money to fund a decade of luxury overseas travel, fine dining, prime sporting venues and frat-style debauchery.

The way Irizarry tells it, dozens of other federal agents, prosecutors, informants and, in some cases, cartel smugglers themselves, have been involved in the three-continent race known as “Team America,” which selects cities to launder money primarily for party goals or to coincide with Real Madrid’s soccer matches or Rafael Nadal’s tennis matches. This included stops along the way in the VIP rooms of Caribbean strip bars, Amsterdam’s red light district and aboard a Colombian yacht that left with plenty of booze and more than a dozen prostitutes.

“We had free rein to do whatever we wanted,” Irizarry, 48, told the AP in a series of interviews before he began a 12-year sentence in federal prison. “We would generate money in places we wanted to go. And once we got there, it was all about drinking and girls.

All this celebration is rooted, Irizarry said, in the crushing realization among DEA agents around the world that there is nothing they can do to make a breakthrough in the drug war anyway. Only nominal concern was given to actually creating cases or stemming a record flow of illegal cocaine and opioids into the United States, which has resulted in more than 100,000 drug overdose deaths annually.

“You can’t win a war you can’t win,” he said. “The war on drugs is a game. … It was a very fun game that we played.”

Irizarry’s story, which some former colleagues attacked as a fabricated attempt to reduce his sentence, came in days of contrite, bitter, sometimes tearful interviews with the AP in the historic district of his native San Juan. It was much the same account he gave to the FBI in lengthy debriefings and sealed court documents obtained by the AP after he pleaded guilty in 2020 to 19 counts of corruption.

But after years of portraying Irizarry as a rogue agent who acted alone, U.S. Justice Department investigators in recent months have begun closely following his confessional roadmap, questioning up to two dozen current and former DEA agents and prosecutors accused , that they turned a blind eye to his gross abuses and sometimes joining.

The onetime top agent accused some former colleagues in the Miami-based DEA’s Group 4 of lining their pockets and falsifying records to replenish a slush fund used for foreign travel for the better part of a decade until his resignation in 2018

“The indictment paints a picture of me, the corrupt agent who made this whole scheme happen. But don’t talk about the rest of the DEA. I wasn’t the mastermind,” Irizarry said.

The Justice Department declined to comment. A DEA spokesman said: “Jose Irizarry is a criminal who violated his oath as a federal law enforcement officer and violated the trust of the American people.”

The AP was able to confirm some, but not all, of Irizarry’s allegations through thousands of confidential law enforcement records and dozens of interviews with people familiar with his allegations and the ongoing criminal investigation.

The investigation has focused in part on George Zumberos, one of Irizarry’s former partners, who traveled extensively overseas on money laundering investigations. Irizarry told the AP that Zumberos enjoyed unlimited access to the so-called commissions and misused the money for personal purchases and unwarranted travel.

Authorities are so focused on Zumberos that they also subpoenaed his brother, a Florida wedding photographer traveling with DEA ​​agents, and even granted him immunity to get him to cooperate. But Michael Zumberos also refused to testify and has been in jail outside Tampa since March for “civil contempt” — an extremely rare pressure tactic that underscores the growing heat of the investigation.

Some current and former DEA agents say Irizarry’s claims are exaggerated or pure fabrications. The attorney for the Zumberos brothers says prosecutors are on a “fishing expedition” to bring more charges because of the embarrassment of the Irizarry scandal.

“They’re looking for a crime that fits this case, not a crime that actually happened,” said attorney Raymond Mansolillo.

Irizarry parlayed his knowledge of black-market pesos into a life of luxury that prosecutors say was financed by $9 million he and his Colombian co-conspirators diverted from money-laundering investigations.

Irizarry’s spending habits quickly began to mimic the flamboyant taste of the drugs he was tasked with targeting, with loot including a $30,000 Tiffany diamond ring for his wife, luxury sports cars and a $767,000 house in the Colombian resort city of Cartagena .

“I fell into the lifestyle,” he said. “I caught the informers and the party.”

After his arrest, Irizarry wrote a self-published book titled “Getting Back on Track,” part of his attempt to own up to his mistakes, and his wife told him she wanted a divorce.

Adding to Irizarry’s despair is that he is still the only one paying such a high price for a pattern of wrongdoing that he says the DEA allowed to develop. To date, prosecutors have yet to bring charges against other agents, and several former colleagues have quietly retired rather than suffer the ignominy of being fired.

“I told them everything I know,” Irizarry said. “All they have to do is dig.”