Shadowy snitch takes starring role in bribery trial of veteran DEA agents

NEW YORK — In his two decades as a professional drug snitch, Jorge Hernández was a master of the double cross.

He lied to his handlers, threatened to unmask fellow informants and even admitted killing three people during his days as a cocaine runner. But time and again, he leveraged his extensive contacts in the narcotrafficking underworld to stay alive, avoid the inside of a jail cell and keep making money.

Now Hernández has turned the tables again, this time on the same U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration that launched his lucrative career as the go-to fixer for traffickers, prosecutors and defense attorneys alike. And he’s delivered his most explosive trophy yet: two veteran DEA agents charged in a $73,000 bribery conspiracy involving leaked information about ongoing drug investigations.

Hernández, a beefy, bald-headed figure known by the Spanish nickname Boliche – bowling ball – made secret recordings for the FBI and is expected to play a key role this month in the Manhattan federal court trial of former DEA supervisors Manny Recio and John Costanzo Jr. It’s a case that threatens to expose the seamy underbelly of the nation’s premier narcotics law enforcement agency, which has seen at least 18 agents charged or convicted of crimes since 2015, many for being too cozy with informants.

Informants like Hernández thrive by trading in the currency of information — who will be charged and when, said Steven Dudley, co-founder of Insight Crime, a research center focused on Latin America.

“He’s a linchpin in a corrupt system that is about making cases and making money,” Dudley said.

“When cases are made everyone wins,” he added. “The narcos get lower sentences and get to keep some proceeds, the prosecutors and agents get promotions, and the lawyers rake in the money. The only loser is Lady Justice.”

The case is just the latest embarrassment for the DEA, following the arrest of a standout agent in Colombia who laundered money for the cartels and spent lavishly on Tiffany jewels and VIP travel, and another accused of accepting $250,000 in bribes to protect the Mafia in Buffalo, New York.

Lawyers for Recio and Costanzo have raised concerns in court papers about Hernández’s criminal history, particularly the three people he admitted to killing prior to becoming an informant. But prosecutors insist he is reliable, pointing to bank records and wiretapped calls they say corroborate his testimony.

“Just because someone has committed crimes doesn’t mean that we immediately discount everything they say,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheb Swett told a judge earlier this year.

Neither the DEA nor the Justice Department responded to requests for comment. Hernández hung up when contacted by the AP.

“Call the Justice Department’s customer service line,” he later texted. “They have all the information you desire.”

Court records show the 56-year old Hernández began his criminal climb in the 1990s dispatching boatloads of cocaine for the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia, a right-wing group that later morphed into one of the world’s largest drug-trafficking organizations.

In 2000, after a warlord placed a hit on him, he fled to neighboring Venezuela, where he was arrested. After paying bribes to secure his release, he approached the DEA about becoming an informant.

By all accounts, Hernández proved an adept casemaker, developing a reputation for delivering results but also aggressive behavior toward friends and foes alike.

Agents grew so reliant on Hernández’s network of more than 100 informants across Latin America and the Caribbean that they set him up with a phone and desk at the Tampa headquarters of Operation Panama Express, a federal anti-narcotics task force combining resources from the FBI, DEA, U.S. Coast Guard and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Court papers show that in early 2019, at the FBI’s direction, Hernández recorded conversations with Recio as well as Miami attorney Luis Guerra in which they discussed recruiting targets of DEA investigations as clients using confidential information allegedly furnished by Costanzo. Recio had recently retired from DEA and was working as a private investigator with Guerra and another attorney, David Macey.

Recio is accused in the indictment of speaking hundreds of times on a burner phone he purchased for Costanzo to allegedly coordinate unlawful searches of criminal databases. In exchange, Recio allegedly directed purchases to Costanzo totaling $73,000.

Costanzo, who was suspended by the DEA after being indicted, denied in a 2019 FBI interview that he ever took anything of value. But he acknowledged that he and other agents sometimes tipped off defense attorneys as part of their mission to encourage suspects to turn themselves in and cooperate.

“We’ve been doing this for years,” he said.