Report: Top anti-drug official was ’secret ally of drug lords’
Published: September 17, 2009
Updated 5 months ago
DEA says key ICE official sold info about informants, ran Panamanian cocaine to Spain via US ports
Richard Padilla Cramer, a 26-year veteran anti-drug official, is behind bars, arrested after officials accused him of directing a massive cocaine shipment to Spain via the United States, and selling important information in law enforcement databases to a vicious Mexican drug cartel.
In other words, Cramer, a key Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent who worked in Guadalajara and Nogales, Arizona, was allegedly “a secret ally of drug lords,” reported The Los Angeles Times.
“The suspected criminal activity that Richard Padilla Cramer has been charged with occurred in 2007 while he was working as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Guadalajara, Mexico, according to a criminal complaint issued on Aug. 28 by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami,” noted The Arizona Star.
“Cramer’s duties as the ICE attache in Guadalajara included serving as a liaison with Mexican police,” the paper noted. “But the investigation revealed that he worked for ‘a very high-level drug lord,’ the federal official said. In a dark twist on the trend of former federal officials going into private consulting, the 26-year government veteran became a full-time adviser to traffickers after retiring from ICE in January 2007, the complaint says.”
Arizona-based Green Valley News and Sun added: “He is accused of negotiating cocaine shipments from Panama to Spain while he was working for ICE out of the Guadalajara office, according to a criminal complaint filed against him by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami, where federal prosecutors say the majority of the acts occurred. Authorities say Cramer will be extradited to Florida.
“The complaint also says Cramer and the smuggling organization invested about $400,000 in a 660-pound shipment of cocaine. The cocaine was shipped from Panama and went through the U.S. en route to Spain, where it was seized in June 2007. He also is accused of selling confidential information from law enforcement databases to an unidentified drug cartel.”
That information, “allegedly helped the Mexican drug lord conduct an internal hunt for [...] informants, whose families would be kidnapped in retaliation, the complaint said,” noted the Times.
“He educated the cartel on how American law enforcement flips informants and the processes behind warrants and record checks,” added The Nogales International. “Sometime before he retired from ICE in 2007, a lead figure in the cartel encouraged Padilla Cramer to leave the agency and, instead, go to work for the cartel. Federal prosecutors have not identified publicly which cartel Padilla Cramer went to work for.”
The paper added: “Negotiations broke down between Padilla Cramer and the head of the trafficking organization that was looking for someone to blame for the losses in Spain. A fourth informant finally approached American law enforcement and told them he spoke with Padilla Cramer on a push-to-talk phone. On Aug. 19, the DEA arrested Padilla Cramer at his house in a gated community in Sahuarita.”
On Sept. 4, Cramer was sent to Florida to face drug trafficking charges, where he currently awaits trial.
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Betca he was another family values kinda guy….
You guys are chasing the snakes tail. It’s head is enjoying a comfy retirement in Houston. And it’s belly is a spokesbitch for FOX named Oliver North.
Does the 2 degrees of separation lead back to ollie ‘the traitor” north and loading up the black neighborhoods with coke to sell for weapons? We shall see.
One of the most serious sequels of the drug war is the corruption of public officials including not only law enforcement agents, the CIA, judges and just about anyone in government that acts or votes for prisons, criminal laws, drug programs, or has anything to do with such matters.
This guy appears to be just another example who happened to get caught.
Of course he was a Family values guy. Who else but an Xian would have the lack of consience to sell tons of drugs to children and to sell out his country. Make him talk then turn him over to the Mexicans. They’ll send his head back in a box.
that doesnt sound very liberal to me. sounds more like ‘rendition’
This is hardly any surprise. We saw the same kinds of corruption during Prohibition. In American, if it’s broken, don’t fix it if there’s a profit to be made at the public’s expense. I love that he lived in a gated community. He will almost certainly be assassinated in prison, if not outside. Works for me either way.
YET ONE MORE REASON to legalize drug use and regulate it here so the drug lords in other countries don’t make the profits. AHHHH - but the bush crime family will loose out on their drug deal profits won’t they?
And with the bush crime family, it wouldn’t suprise me at all that not only do they make huge profits off of the illegal drug trade, they probably also make big bucks off the for-profit corporate prisons.
You have that right, the bush crime family under the direction of GHW is taking profits from both sides - sell the drugs and then arrest the guys for possession and collect big long term profits for housing the so called criminals. And in reality it is the bush gang who should be in jail for their crimes while drug users should be in rehab treatment facilities.
this guy is probably responsible for more deaths than Aldrich ‘Rick’ Ames.
i find it incredibly disturbing that there was a guy like this so high up…. what else has been hiding in the high levels of the drug war?
I have no doubt that this guy isn’t the only one that has been corrupted because of the profitability of illegal drugs–there’s probably many others within various govt agencies peddling their influence for personal gain.
And all the while thousands of people sit in prisons all around the country for illegal drug use–they not only prosecute the sellers, they prosecute the buyers–a victimless crime, the prosecution of which has destroyed thousands of lives. Remember when you couldn’t get a job, a house, food stamps–nothing–if you had a “drug conviction?” Th
There’s no question in my mind that the people that stand to lose the most from the legalization of drugs are the ones that are putting up the biggest fight to stop decriminalization. The illegal drug trade is a multi-billion dollar black market (criminal) enterprise, but there are other “legitimate” professions that benefit from the continued criminalization of drugs as well, such as various law enforcement agencies, etc. But the fact is, if you want to drastically reduce crime, legalizing drugs would go a long way to accomplishing that.
Absolutely sickening!!
Oops! I accidentally sent before adding last sentence to my second paragraph:
They put people into the position of having no alternative but to make a living engaging in criminal activity just to survive.
The Bush Family hates competition. Google “Chip Tatum.” Very interesting stuff… .
it’s not that he got caught; EVERYONE in government is corrupt. (See Blagojavich.) This guy pissed someone else off and that’s why he got ratted out. Look what Bush got away with, and yet he’s walking free. Let’s see if he makes it to trial (unlike Oswald, Booth) and what he sings if he does.
The reason the US government refuses to even discuss legalization is because the cost of these illegal drugs would plummet to 1/10th-1/100th of their cost if they were legal. ( http://www.suburra.com ) The moral of the story is: BANKERS RUN THE COUNTRY.
Shocked I tell you, just shocked. Who could have ever guessed that govt. officials would be involved in drug trafficking? I mean drugs are illegal and drugs are expensive and make a lot of money for the drug runners. Whoaaaa, wait a minute…that couldn’t be why they are illegal could it? If they were legal there would be less profit motive involved and not as much money to be made. By even pot clouded logic it could be that certain people want to keep drugs on the black market so they can make money and who better to facilitate that than a DEA/ICE employee? I think I may be seeing a “connection”.
There is a very appropriate saying: “A fish stinks first from the head”, meaning if there is corruption, it starts from the top person(s) and trickles down to the masses.
If we see the so-called ‘top’ people getting arrested and incarcerated for crimes, it will be the best deterrent.
Although I am against using any type of drugs myself, I tend to believe they should be allowed/decriminalized.
It would be much cheaper on Society, on many levels.
phillydrifter
Don’t be listing “Blaggo” as corrupt. Alex Bennett interviewed him on Sirius Radio channel 146 the other day and when the trial happens, heads will roll. Rod was ‘rolled” by the “liberal” democrats.
It would be a wonderful thing for the readers of this site to come up with a step-by-step process that would indict, prosecute and convict Oliver North for any one or all of his many crimes. Here’s my pitch: contact Tony Perkins of the “Family Research Council” and ask him to ask his subscribers to beseech the little baby Jesus to bury Ollie in the cooler for the rest of his life.
No different than the traitors who become lobbyists for foreign companies and sell this country down the road.
This man is not an exception- he is the Rule.
How about the story of the CIA’s Rendition plane that crashed in Mexico carry tons of cocaine last year? The dirty lil’ secret for years is that govt’ agencies supply the inner cities with drugs, than bust the drug war they create to fill the prisons with helpless patsies.
Besides tax revenue, that’s the number #1 reason to legalize almost all drugs.
This guy is the rule, not the exception.
Can’t trust a tweaker, can’t trust a narc.
When will people understand that in the War on Drugs, the REAL ENEMY is the DEA?