NEW YORK (AP) - Federal prosecutors announced conspiracy charges Tuesday against a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent accused of providing firearms to a violent drug-trafficking organization that has been blamed for a half dozen murders.
The agent, Fernando Gomez, was arrested at the DEA’s Chicago field division and charged with conspiring to distribute cocaine and aiding and abetting the possession of firearms, among other counts.
The charges were unsealed Tuesday by a federal judge in New York. Authorities said Gomez faces a minimum 20-year prison sentence if convicted.
Gomez’s defense attorney, Robert L. Rascia, said the allegations “seem to be a far cry from the good character I’ve known Mr. Gomez to possess in his professional life.” Gomez served eight years in the military before going into law enforcement, Rascia said.
Prosecutors said Gomez, 41, began smuggling firearms into Puerto Rico while working as a detective in Evanston, Illinois, a police department that employed him between 2004 and 2011. He then joined the DEA so that he could help members of La Organizacion de Narcotraficantes Unidos, or La ONU, evade law enforcement, prosecutors said.
“He will now be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in a statement.
A spokesman for the Evanston Police Department declined to comment on the charges.
Mary Brandenberger, a DEA spokeswoman, said Gomez remains employed by the DEA despite the indictment.
“When allegations of misconduct come forward, DEA aggressively pursues those allegations and fully cooperates with all investigating agencies,” Brandenberger said in an email.
Gomez is accused of providing firearms to Jose Martinez-Diaz, an alleged drug trafficker who is charged along with eight other defendants accused of conspiring to smuggle large quantities of cocaine from Puerto Rico to New York.
The DEA has said the investigation began in 2013 with an inquiry into a local drug distribution organization working out of a daycare center in the Bronx.
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