As a paid informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, Guillermo Francisco Jordan-Pollito has achieved a remarkable record of success.
Over the last 10 years, according to his own testimony in Los Angeles federal court, the former Mexican police officer has earned more than $350,000 helping the DEA put together more than 80 cases against suspected sellers of cocaine, methamphetamines and other illicit drugs.
There's just one thing missing from that picture. The DEA's star undercover operative used a stable of his own paid informants to assist him in setting up drug buys, a fact that was kept from defense lawyers in an undetermined number of those cases.
The failure of federal prosecutors to disclose that information has resulted in a sharp rebuke from a federal judge and the dismissal of charges against three defendants. And more legal challenges are in the works, including one that will be heard today by another federal judge in Los Angeles.
Ronald O. Kaye, a former federal public defender now in private practice, uncovered Jordan-Pollito's use of "sub-informants" last year after combing through telephone records turned over to him by federal prosecutors in a methamphetamine-trafficking case.
The prosecution contended that the sub-informant in Kaye's case had done nothing more than introduce Jordan-Pollito to the three defendants. But Kaye was able to show that the sub-informant, Jose Agapito Gomez, made 29 telephone calls to the defendants during a one-week period leading up to their arrests. The defense attorney also documented 68 calls between Jordan-Pollito and Gomez during the same period.
After hearing arguments from both sides, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper ordered the government to disclose the names and file numbers of all cases in which Jordan-Pollito or Gomez had been employed and how much they had been paid.
When the prosecution refused to do so, Cooper tossed out the indictment and ordered the defendants freed.
"The government's representations regarding the use of confidential informants in this case have repeatedly proven to be unreliable," the judge stated in a strongly worded opinion. Cooper said that either the government did not know about the sub-informant's existence, which she called "highly unlikely," or the government deliberately lied to the defense.
