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Part-Time Job

The Drug Enforcement Administration won’t identify an undercover informant that has worked for them in south Florida for 31 years, but admit that in that time, they’ve paid him about $1.5 million — an average of more than $48,000 per year. The information came out in a court hearing about the same time the findings of an audit by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General was released, which notes that over a 5-year span, the DEA paid $237 million to 9,000 confidential sources nationwide. The audit found “the DEA did not adequately oversee payments to its sources, which exposes the DEA to an unacceptably increased potential for fraud, waste, and abuse.” Informants are sometimes paid as much as 25 percent of the cash or the value of the drugs seized, and work under written contracts. A DEA spokeswoman notes that informants are well paid, but “You never know what the informant is going through or the dangers they face, the risks they are taking on.” The judge in the case where the informant’s long career came out, U.S. Magistrate Judge William Matthewman, who was previously a police officer in Miami, commented, “It’s surprising that he’s still alive.” (RC/South Florida Sun-Sentinel) ...It’s the number-one civilian job in the agency — with a bullet.