José Irizarry is widely known as the most corrupt DEA agent in the agency's history.
Which is quite a feat because we've heard some stories about DEA agents
getting naughty,
getting involved in things they're not supposed to be getting involved in.
But Irizarry is now claiming over the course of many interviews with
the Associated Press that he's actually just one of many corrupt agents
who like to party, travel, and get wasted on the government's dime.
Real good to know that our taxpayer money is going to wonderful causes like this.
Now here's what Irizarry has described in his interviews with the Associated Press.
Dozens of other federal agents, prosecutors, informants and
in some cases cartel smugglers themselves were all in on the three
continent joyride known as team America that chose cities for
money laundering pickups mostly for party purposes or
to coincide with Real Madrid soccer or Rafael Nadal tennis matches.
>> Hilarious.
>> They're hitting up these sporting events.
They're using government money to do their partying.
They're even laundering money on behalf of criminal organizations in an effort to
do these sting operations, and in some cases,
losing track of the money that they're laundering.
It is insane.
So as Irizarry says in the interview, we had free access to do whatever we wanted.
We would generate money pick-ups in places we wanted to go.
And once we got there, it was about drinking and girls.
So just a few more details and I'll go to you Jank.
So the corrupt DEA agents funded their lavish lifestyles through the DEAs
own money laundering activities.
So every year, the DEA launders tens of millions of dollars on behalf of
the world's most violent drug cartels through shell companies,
a tactic touted in long-running overseas investigations such as
Operation White Wash that resulted in more than 100 arrests and
the seizure of more than $100 million dollars and a ton of cocaine.
Now, the DEA has also faced criticism for
allowing huge amounts of money in the operation to go unseized,
enabling cartels to continue plying their trade and for failing to tightly
monitor and track the stings, making it difficult to evaluate results.
And what's really interesting about this story is that Irizarry is salty about
the fact that he's the one who's been targeted for these investigations and
he's the one who's referred to as the most corrupt DEA agent.
And so now he's like, I'm about to tell all, cuz I was surrounded by
a bunch of these goons who did the same thing and they're not getting called out.
And prosecutors actually agree with him on that, Jank.
>> To which I say, of course.
So power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely.
And money corrupts.
So we have a toxic combination here.
So DEA seize his money in legitimate and illegitimate ways.
For example, they do seizures and asset forfeitures on the spot.
So like if they bust you on something they say you did, even if you didn't do it,
they could seize the car that you're in, the boat that you're on.
They've seized houses before, etc.
And 95% of the time, you cannot get that stuff back,
okay, even if you didn't do it.
So they started gorging on basically legalized robbery.
And so then we're surprised to find out the DEA has tons
of robbers in it, but we taught them to be robbers.
>> 100%.
>> Right?
And then they're doing the White Wash operation.
Now that one is legitimate because I know you have to sometimes participate in it to
get the evidence.
So they're doing the money laundering, they collect evidence and
then they do 100 arrests, right?
But in the meanwhile, you still have people that are participating in this,
and again, they're getting more steeped in the culture of robbery, right?
And so then they start just taking the money and
then doing these illicit things with them.
You should have a lot of guardrails there.
You should be super careful about how you conduct operations like that so
that the people involved don't get corrupted.
Well, they didn't have those and they got massively corrupted.
>> Now prosecutors say that Irizarry has embezzled as much as $9 million,
which is freaking insane, from these money laundering schemes.
And he was chosen by the DEA to handle sensitive financial
transactions even after he had filed for bankruptcy,
which like speaking of guardrails, right, dude just filed for bankruptcy.
I'm not saying that everyone who filed for
bankruptcy is gonna engage in criminality or anything like that, but I mean.
>> But he doesn't need the money.
>> He needs the money and there's all these financial pressures, so
maybe just do a little bit of oversight, just a little bit of oversight.
>> And guys, a lot of times you can just see it when they show up with the fancy
cars and the guy's declaring bankruptcy.
>> Yeah, like flashy and everything.
>> Right.
>> Like super flashy, okay.
Anyway, eventually he was brought down by another informant who confessed to
misappropriating funds and he ended up pleading guilty to 19 counts
of corruption and will shortly begin a 12 year federal prison sentence.
So there are consequences.
And again, he's facing the consequences, he's super salty that all of his former
colleagues are not currently facing the consequences,
which is why he's calling for them to be looked into as well.
He explained that the reason that he and other DEA agents weren't doing their jobs
is because many of them actually believed that their efforts are worthless,
that the drug war is unwinnable.
>> Can I just say?
I'm gonna interrupt for a second, just to say,
that's the most true thing I've ever heard.
>> Yeah, it is, it is.
>> And you see that time and time again, not just in corruption cases,
but DEA just local cops going, well,
I might as well take the money because we're not gonna win this war anyway.
This whole thing is BS.
Everything is a lie, right?
Some of them, my point is that some of them start out honest, get frustrated and
they're like, well, I might as well just take it, right?
>> Yeah, let me give you his exact quote.
So this is what he told the Associated Press.
Quote, you can't win an unwinnable war.
DEA knows this and the agents know this.
There's so much dope leaving Colombia.
And there's so much money.
We know we're not making a difference.
The drug war is a game.
It was a very fun game that we were playing.
So can we stop paying this agency with our tax money?
I mean, there's so much that we need in this country for ordinary Americans.
The idea of just dumping all, not all, but
a huge portion of our resources into a government agency that doesn't even
believe in the mission that they're they're engaged in.
Not a good feeling.
>> Yeah, and we have to break it down in a couple of different parts, right?
So for a long time, a huge part of the war on drugs was marijuana.
And it still is, cuz remember, it's still illegal nationwide.
Different states have legalized it but not all states.
And at the federal level it's still a schedule one drugs saying that it's
the most dangerous drug.
So anyone involved in the war on drugs when it comes to marijuana obviously
is wasting their time, and that should be disbanded immediately.
On the other hand, there are very hard drugs that are very dangerous,
like Fentanyl.
But then for those drugs,
the correct answer is not throw a bunch of agents at it, have them take the money and
then hope that they return it and lead to this kind of crazy criminality.
The answer is to address it on the demand side rather than the supply side.
I'm not saying you don't do any blocking of drugs.
Yes, give that to your best chance, I guess, right,
trying to stop it at the border, etc.
But you really have to have an excellent program to make sure that people are not
taking it here.
As long as there's demand and everyone that knows markets knows this,
as long as there's demand, there's gonna be supply.
>> Yeah, the question is, why is there so much demand?
And look, I think that like some drugs, I don't even think are a big deal,
like marijuana, right?
I don't want kids doing marijuana, but overall, it is a relatively harmless drug.
When it comes to the harmful drugs, like the Fentanyl epidemic that we're dealing
with right now, the question is, why is there so much demand?
And it's escapism, it's people not having their material needs met,
all of those things.
I think dealing with those issues is much more important than having a government
agency waste all of our resources on something they don't even believe.