NY – An agent of the Federal Drug Enforcement Bureau (DEA) He was sentenced Wednesday to four years in prison for participating in an illegal organization to send thousands of kilos of cocaine from Puerto Rico to NY.
Fernando Gómez was accused of infiltrating the US drug agency DEA in 2011 and helping a notorious drug trafficking network for killing his rivals.
Gomez pleaded guilty last year of selling firearms to a cocaine dealer, at a time when he was a policeman outside Chicago.
Further, helped the United Narcotrafficking Organization evade the authorities, collected money for the network and entered the DEA files illegally to look for documents about a trafficker who he said had information about another defendant.
Gomez, who was in a Marines time, sobbed in court, asking for forgiveness for his “poor trial” which, he said, derived from his desire to protect family members involved in drug trafficking.
“The government wants you to use me as an exemplary punishment,” Gomez told Judge Jesse Furman. “I am not that example. I was not running like a cowboy with his badge.”
Furman expressed himself moved by Gomez’s regret, but added that the betrayal of his public duties “has left a stain on the DEA and all police agencies.”
According to federal guidelines, Gomez would have to be in jail for at least seven years, but the judge said that such sentence would be unfair given the public service provided by Gomez and the fact that he cooperated with the investigation.
The magistrate added that there are several unresolved questions about why Gomez joined the DEA in 2011, where he worked until he was arrested in 2018.
The prosecution claims that Gomez lied when he was interviewed for the job, but Judge Furman said the government has not presented reliable evidence that Gomez became a “double agent.”
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