A former high-ranking US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who was stationed in Mexico before retiring in 2007 was arrested on Friday on suspicion of conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the US.
Richard Cramer was arrested at his home in Green Valley, Arizona, 40km south of Tucson, and appeared before a federal judge, who denied bail.
No one answered the phone at Cramer’s home on Friday and it was unclear whether he had a lawyer.
The charges stem from a US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) investigation dating back to 2006.
Authorities say Cramer helped a large-scale drug trafficking organization move cocaine into the US, a criminal complaint made public on Friday said.
The complaint said that Cramer provided members of a drug smuggling organization with information from confidential law enforcement databases that told them whether one of their members was a government informant.
The complaint also said Cramer and the smuggling organization invested about US$400,000 in a 300kg shipment of cocaine. The cocaine was shipped from Panama and went through the US en route to Spain, where it was seized in June 2007.
An informant told DEA agents that Cramer had “very powerful friends” among DEA agents in Mexico and a strong relationship with one particular member of the smuggling organization, the complaint said.
The complaint also said that during an August 2007 meeting, a member of the smuggling organization convinced Cramer to retire from ICE and begin working directly for the organization in drug smuggling and money laundering.
The case is being handled by the US Attorney’s Office in Miami, where federal prosecutors say the majority of the acts occurred.
Authorities said Cramer would be extradited to Florida.
Cramer was the former resident agent in charge of the ICE office in Nogales, southern Arizona, said agency spokesman Vincent Picard, who did not know how long Cramer worked there or how many agents he oversaw.
“It’s a criminal complaint, not a conviction,” Picard said.
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