WAR ON DRUGS

Undercover U.S. Agents Aided Cartel

Laundered Mexicans’ money to gain trust.

It seems to have gone better than Fast and Furious. Documents disclosed by the Mexican Foreign Ministry— in a case against a Colombian cocaine supplier, Harold Mauricio Poveda-Ortega, also known as “The Rabbit”—reveal an elaborate operation by the U.S Drug Enforcement Administration. U.S. agents posed as money launderers, sometimes moving millions of dollars in drug money around the world, in an effort to gain the trust of Ortega's cartel. The document describes one part of the operation in which DEA agents in Texas posed as pilots and transported cocaine around the world for $1,000 per kilo. At another point, undercover Ecuadorean agents helped transport 330 kilos of cocaine from Ecuador to Spain, where it was seized.