The Disposable Life of a 20 Year-Old Confidential Informant

[timosman]

[tod evans]

Evisceration on the public square is too good of a fate for prosecuting attorneys..

[osan]

Good part of that report is that it provides the names of all who could be justly targeted for proper punishment.

Sadly, those names will never meet with justice.

We deserve that which we tolerate.

[Intoxiklown]

I knew a guy who was a paid informant for US Customs. He would only work with them, and when Customs was morphed into Homeland Security, he quit. He was interesting to talk to, and had a lot of interesting stories.

US Customs paid him between $50k to $250k case dependent, and only on conviction. He said with drugs, anything less than 1,000 pounds they did not care about. With guns, unless they were coming in from overseas, they did not care about. They would ask if he wanted to work with DEA or ATF for those, but he refused (under advice from his Customs "handler"). And if there was a chance it would compromise him, Customs wouldn't even report the "smaller" cases to other agencies. They only cared about people directly linked to organized criminals outside the US, who were using those ties to bring in large amounts of contraband. And anything that was deemed too dangerous, they would not sanction him to do.

They actually followed all laws he said, being very specific what he could and could not do. He turned them onto a money laundering operation involving the Zeta cartel based in Atlanta that they had to drop because he did something wrong. He said Customs was pissed, but there was no retribution. He quit when DHS was formed (again, under advice from his Customs handler), because he was told his security, both physical and financial, would be under different, and very vague rules from then on.