Longtime DEA informant charged in alleged scheme to extort high-level cocaine traffickers

MIAMI (AP) — A drug informant who helped the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration build some of its biggest cases has been arrested and charged with scheming to extort major cocaine traffickers facing extradition from Colombia and the Dominican Republic.

Jorge Hernández, 57, was charged in a criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday with one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud. He remains in custody after being arrested and making his initial court appearance Wednesday in federal court in Fort Lauderdale.

Court papers allege that Hernández operated a scheme starting in 2020 in which he pretended to be a paralegal who, for the right price, could obtain lighter sentences for drug kingpins, according to 17-page FBI affidavit.

The FBI alleged that Hernández demanded payments of $1 million from six suspected drug traffickers who ended up surrendering or being extradited to the U.S.

In exchange for the payments — which came in the form of cash, jewelry, properties and vehicles in Colombia — Hernández guaranteed short prison sentences that would be served “in an apartment similar to being on house arrest,” the court papers said.

But Hernández never delivered on his promises, nor did he have authority to offer such leniency. As the traffickers who thought they were buying influence grew upset, he would deny responsibility and shift blame to the traffickers’ attorneys, the FBI said.

Nestor Menendez, an attorney who represented Hernández at his initial appearance, declined to comment.

In two decades as a confidential informant, Hernández had been one of federal law enforcement’s most prolific case-makers, providing the types of tips and information that led to prosecutions of high seas drug smugglers, a former University of Miami money laundering expert and a close ally of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Better known in law enforcement circles by his Spanish nickname Boliche — bowling ball — the beefy, bald-headed Colombian was also the star witness in the 2023 bribery trial of two former DEA supervisors convicted for leaking information on ongoing drug investigations.

He got his start as an informant in 2000 shortly after he was arrested in Venezuela, where he had fled to escape drug dealers seeking to kill him, according to a 2023 investigation by The Associated Press.

After bribing officials to secure his release, he approached the DEA, admitting to killing three people during his days as a drug runner near his home along Colombia’s Caribbean coast. He then began helping the DEA build some of its biggest cases.

Agents grew so reliant on Hernández’s network of criminal associates across the Western hemisphere that they set him up with a phone and desk at a federal anti-narcotics task force, the AP found.

The DEA terminated his cooperation agreement in 2008, court records show, after authorities discovered he had threatened to expose informants as snitches unless they paid him to keep quiet.

But he kept close to some of his former DEA handlers and eventually returned to Miami. In 2016, he met DEA agent John Costanzo, who was supervising agents investigating Colombian businessman Alex Saab, a suspected bag man for Venezuela’s Maduro. In 2023, Hernández testified against Costanzo and another former DEA agent convicted of taking bribes from narco defense attorneys.

Hernández turned the tables on the DEA around the same time he was charged alongside University of Miami professor Bruce Bagley for helping move $3 million on behalf of Saab, who prosecutors said was secretly negotiating a deal to betray Maduro.

Those charges remain under seal. In the complaint unsealed Wednesday, the FBI that Hernández is serving a term of probation on a federal conviction for conspiracy to commit money laundering that is set to end in May 2027.

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Mustian reported from New York.