By Allan Lengel

WASHINGTON — Prescription drugs stored in medicine cabinets and in kitchens and bedrooms may not be as innocent as they appear.

With that in mind, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, along with government, community, public health and law enforcement partners, plan next month to launch a “Take-Back” initiative “that seeks to prevent increased pill abuse and theft.”

The DEA said it will collect potentially dangerous expired, unused and unwanted prescription drugs for destruction at sites nationwide on Saturday, Sept. 25 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“Many Americans are not aware that medicines that languish in home cabinets are highly susceptible to diversion, misuse, and abuse. Rates of prescription drug abuse in the U.S. are increasing at alarming rates, as are the number of accidental poisonings and overdoses due to these drugs,” the DEA said in a press release.

“Studies show that a majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family and friends, including from the home medicine cabinet,” the release said.

Michele M. Leonhart, Acting Administrator of DEA said in a statement: “This effort symbolizes DEA’s commitment to halting the disturbing rise in addiction caused by their misuse and abuse.”

By Allan Lengel

If you speak Ebonics, the federal government may have a job for you.

The Drug Enforcement Administration wants to hire people fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, transcribe and translate secretly recorded conversations in narcotics investigations, according to the website The Smoking Gun and DEA documents.

The Smoking Gun reports that up to nine Ebonics experts will work with the DEA Atlanta Division after obtaining “DEA Sensitive” security clearance.

Ebonics, or “Black English,” generally is defined as a nonstandard form of English spoken by African-Americans.

To read more click here.

OTHER STORIES OF INTEREST

• RFK Jr.’s Wife Faces New Impaired Driving Charges (AP)
• Witness Says He Felt Safe Around Az. Escapees (AP)
• Tex. Money Laundering Case Against Tom DeLay Moving Forward (AP)
• Death Penalty on Table for New Orleans Cops in Danziger Bridge Killings (New Orleans Times-Picayune)
• Calif. Man Gets 20 Years in Anthrax Hoax (AP)
• Ex-Bureau of Land Management Manager Took Oil Company Gifts (AP)
• Scant Progress in FBI Probes Into Civil Rights Era Murders (NY Times)
• Some Mass. Towns Give up on Marijuana Enforcement (AP)
• Ex-Maine Prosecutor Guilty of Child Porn Charges (Portland Press Herald)

By Allan Lengel

A suspected member of the violent Juarez Drug Cartel in Mexico has been extradited to the states, the DEA in El Paso said.

Felipe DOMINGUEZ-Vargas was extradited on Aug. 10 and made his initial appearance on drug charges in U.S. District Court in El Paso on Monday, according to Joseph M. Arabit, of the El Paso DEA. He waived his right to a detention hearing.

DOMINGUEZ faces six counts of conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute heroin, cocaine and marijuana, the DEA said. He was first arrested by Mexican authorities in November 2009.

By Matt Castello

For a big-time Louisiana drug trafficker, the dog and cockfighting ring served as the ideal venue to help expand his drug ring.

Pedro Mendez Ramos, of Church Point, La., who authorities described as “an avid pit bull and cock fighter”, used more than 300 gamecocks and 60 pit bulls as a recruiting tool for the drug organization he headed up.

Late last week, Ramos, 41, was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Lake Charles, La., to 12.5 years in prison.

Authorities said the organization transported and distributed cocaine and marijuana from the Brownsville, Tex. area to the Church Point, La. area and then to Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, and other parts of Louisiana.

Members of the Gulf Cartel, a Matamoros, Mexico based drug organization, directly supplied drugs to Ramos’ crew, authorities said.

An investigation nicknamed “Operation Fowl Play” and “Rio Gallo” netted indictments of 18 men (including Ramos) on a variety of drug trafficking, money laundering and firearms charges.

The DEA, working together with local and state law enforcement, seized approximately 111 kilograms of cocaine from the drug organization along with $1.8 million in cash and about $1 million in property in Louisiana and Texas, authorities said.

The DEA said it’s not unusual for there to be a connection between dog fighting and other illicit activities including drug sales.

“I don’t want to say it goes hand in hand, but its safe to say there’s an overlap” between dog fighting and other forms of crime, Special Agent Roberto Bryan, a DEA spokesman in New Orleans told ticklethewire.com.

By Allan Lengel

The cancerous violence of the Mexican drug cartels seems to be spreading into Central America where the drug networks are burrowing in, the Washington Post reports.

And the presence of the cartels threatens to destabalize the countries that already face daunting crime figures, the Post reported.

The Mexican cartels “are spreading their horizons to states where they feel, quite frankly, more comfortable. These governments in Central America face a very real challenge in confronting these organizations,” David Gaddis, chief of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration told the Post.

To read more click here.

By Allan Lengel

A man known as the Pablo Escobar of the Caribbean was captured by federal authorities Saturday in Puerto Rico following a decade-long hunt, the Associated Press reported.

FBI, DEA, U.S. Marshals  and Puerto Rico Police captured Jose Figueroa Agosto in a working class neighborhood in San Juan, AP reported. he was wearing a wig and jumped out of his car and tried running when he saw he was being followed.

“We asked him his name, and he simply answered that we knew who he was,” Antonio Torres, who heads the U.S. Marshal Service’s fugitive task force in Puerto Rico said, according to AP.

“It is a tremendous arrest, definitely,” U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez told a news conference Saturday, according to AP.

AP reported that Figueroa,45, is suspected of shipping Colombian drugs to the U.S. via Puerto Rico. He escaped from prison in 1999.

WASHINGTON — FBI agents are supposed to unearth scams, not become victims of them. This time is different.

Some 300 retired and current federal agents — representing the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — collectively invested tens of millions of dollars of retirement money in what turned out to be a Ponzi scheme allegedly run by a Florida man who committed suicide last month, an attorney in the case said.

The FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission are now investigating and trying to recover funds.

“There are definitely [agents] who have lost their life savings,” Fort Lauderdale attorney Michael Goldberg, who is representing the victims, told AOL News.

The reaction of the agents? “Pretty much what you expect,” Goldberg said. “Shock and anger.”

Behind it all, authorities said, was a self-described retirement investment adviser named Kenneth Wayne McLeod, 48. For years McLeod served as a trusted adviser to federal agents around the country, making free financial projections for retirement and in some cases offering high-yield returns of 8 to 10 percent on certain investments, according to an SEC filing in the case.

On June 22, McLeod was found dead in Jacksonville, Fla., of a gunshot wound.

His Florida-based companies, Federal Employee Benefits Group Inc. and F&S Asset Management Group Inc., appear to have been shut down and all assets frozen, authorities said. Calls to both numbers went unanswered this afternoon and the voice mails were full.

McLeod allegedly mentioned to prospective clients the names of many federal agents he knew, including straitlaced FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, according to the website Gang Land News, which reported on the story today.

“[McLeod] would tell people that Bob Mueller was a friend of his,” a retired FBI agent told Gang Land News. “The guy was a real charmer. He would say that he and Bob were best of friends and that Bob and his wife used to stay at his place all the time. The worst thing about this is that this creep scammed hard-working GS-13s and GS-14s [federal employees].”

Mueller did in fact rent vacation properties in Amelia Island, Fla., for several years, Gang Land News reported. But Michael Kortan, the chief FBI spokesman, said in a statement that even if McLeod had owned one of those properties, Mueller had no idea who he was renting from.

“The director had no personal or professional relationship with Mr. McLeod, nor did he engage in any financial dealings of any kind with him,” Kortan stated.

According to the SEC, McLeod for years put on retirement seminars that federal agencies paid as much as $15,000 for. He offered some investments with such companies as Fidelity, which the FBI said appeared to be safe. But others investments appeared to be fraudulent.

In many instances, he offered high returns — 8 to 10 percent — through bonds.

“The security of the government bonds was a key element of McLeod’s deception but he never purchased any bonds,” the SEC said in a statement on June 25. “Instead, he used the investors’ retirement savings to conduct a Ponzi scheme, to pay himself and to pay for lavish entertainment, including annual trips to the Super Bowl for himself and 40 friends.”

FBI special agent Jeff Westcott of the Jacksonville, Fla., office, which is investigating the matter, told AOL News that McLeod had “an air of credibility.”

The irony and embarrassment of the case are clear to many agents around the country. And at the SEC, the unusual set of circumstances is not lost on officials.

Glenn Gordon, SEC associate regional director for the Miami Regional Office, said, “I am not aware personally of another case where this was the target audience.”

By Allan Lengel

WASHINGTON — FBI agents are supposed to unearth scams, not become victims of them. This time is different.

Up to 300 or so retired and current federal agents from the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), invested collectively tens of millions of dollars of retirement money in what has turned out to be a Ponzi scheme run by a Florida man who just committed suicide. The FBI and the Security Exchange Commission are investigating and trying recover funds.

“There’s definitely ones who have lost their life savings,” Ft. Lauderdale Attorney Michael Goldberg, who is representing victims, told AOL News.

The reaction of the agents? “Pretty much what you expect,” he said. “Shock and anger.”

Behind it all is a suspected con artist, a self-described retirement investment adviser Kenneth Wayne McLeod, 48, who for years became a trusted adviser to federal agents around the country, offering free financial projections for retirement and offering, in some cases, high-yield returns of 8 to 10 percent on certain investments, according to an SEC filing in the case.

To read full story click here.