Pubdate: Sun, 24 Feb 2008
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
Copyright: 2008 PG Publishing
Contact:  http://www.post-gazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/341
Author: Bill Moushey
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Lee+Lucas
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

COMPLAINTS ABOUT AGENT DATE TO START OF HIS CAREER

In 1991, shortly after his 22nd birthday, Lee Lucas became an 
undercover agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. He 
quickly built international drug investigations stretching from his 
Miami base to the Bahamas, Brazil, Bolivia and beyond.

Over the next five years, in every major case the long-haired 
undercover operative and son of a Cleveland cop worked, there were 
charges of deceit, perjury, missing drugs and money, questionable 
associations with criminal informers and allegations that sting 
operations he orchestrated were rife with fraud.

At the time, none of the complaints resulted in any public 
disciplinary action, but several individuals who have complained 
about his tactics say they were recently questioned by U.S. 
Department of Justice officials investigating Mr. Lucas for his work 
in a Mansfield, Ohio, drug sting that led to 26 arrests. Twenty-three 
of those cases were dismissed or ended in acquittals after a federal 
informant who worked with Agent Lucas said he had framed innocent people.

It's an old pattern with Agent Lucas.

It dates to the mid-1990s, when Gary J. McDaniel, president of 
Pretext Services Inc., a private investigative firm in North Palm 
Beach, Fla., joined a group of defense lawyers and defendants who 
complained about Agent Lucas to the DEA, the Justice Department and 
members of Congress.

Mr. McDaniel called the cases made by Agent Lucas "a textbook example 
of the abuse of power of which appear to be endorsed by senior 
management of the DEA."

He recently was interviewed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce 
Teitelbaum, the Pittsburgh prosecutor handling a special 
investigation of what went wrong in Mansfield.

Complaints about Agent Lucas began shortly after his promotion from a 
non-law enforcement "aide" at the DEA.  He was involved in a 
Bahamas-to-Miami bust of 423 kilograms of cocaine -- a haul valued at 
more than $10 million. The case led to a conviction and life sentence 
for Peter Hidalgo and several others.

Mr. Hidalgo, who claims he is innocent, and his codefendants asked 
for internal investigations of Mr.  Lucas when a cooperating witness 
said 23 kilograms of the cocaine had disappeared.

They offered sworn statements from cooperating witnesses and 
surveillance tapes that documented informers discussing the missing 
dope. Yet Agent Lucas was cleared of impropriety in that case as well 
as another drug bust where defendants reported that 20 kilograms of 
cocaine had disappeared.

In appeals, Mr. Hidalgo and his codefendants claimed Agent Lucas and 
his partner also illegally created an aura of fear around their cases 
by damaging cars at the crime scene, and then testifying the 
vandalism had been done by a Colombian hit team aiming to harm 
informers.  The government later admitted it hid polygraph tests 
showing a key witness against Mr. Hidalgo was lying.

"He's willing to break the law, whatever the cost is, in order to 
come away with a conviction," Mr. Hildago said during a telephone 
call Friday from the Federal Correctional Institution at Coleman, 
Fla. His appeals have been denied.

Agent Lucas worked another high-profile Florida drug case in 1994, 
leading to a 27-year sentence for a Miami police officer. The 
defendant said prosecutors "knowingly exploited the perjured 
testimony of Agent Lucas from the inception of the investigation, 
repeatedly misrepresenting the facts."

Agent Lucas was then teamed up with a German criminal and undercover 
operative named Helmut Groebe. Despite Mr. Groebe's criminal record 
dating to 1981 for various frauds around the world, he was paid more 
than $600,000 by the DEA to work with the young agent to build 
international drug cases.

The largest was the arrest and extradition of a Bolivian anti-drug 
czar after the duo convinced American authorities that 500 audio and 
14 videotapes implicated him in a drug conspiracy

As Faustino Rico Toro sat in detention in Miami for five years 
awaiting trial, Pretext Services' Mr.  McDaniel traveled to Bolivia 
for Mr. Rico Toro's attorney. Mr. McDaniel said he found no damning 
tapes, no physical evidence of drugs and no hidden assets that could 
be tied to his client.

What he did find were four men who said Agent Lucas and his partner 
attempted to pay them $20,000 each for testimony.

Federal prosecutors allowed Mr. Rico Torocq to plead guilty to a 
minor drug charge and in late 1996, sent him home. 
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