Tag: dea

Top Obama DEA Official Charged With Laundering Money For Mexican Drug Cartel

A former Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official appointed as deputy chief of the Office of Financial Operations during the Obama administration – and who still holds a security clearance – was indicted on Friday on charges of agreeing to launder $12 million for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) – which was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization in February of this year.

Paul Campo, who oversaw the FBI’s money laundering operations and resigned in January 2016 ahead of Trump’s inauguration, laundered around $750,000 for the cartel by converting cash into cryptocurrency, and agreed to launder far more – totaling over $12 million, according to the indictment. 

Campo’s hoome was raided by federal agents on Thursday.

Campo also provided a payment for around 220 kilos of cocaine on the understanding that the drugs had been imported into the USA, the indictment further states. 

He was able to do this after spending 25 years at the DEA, rising to a high-level position which he used to sell himself to CJNG as someone who could; 

  • give inside information on DEA operations
  • help them move drug money
  • help them avoid detection
  • and even advise on narcotics logistics

In late 2024, Campo, along with a friend Robert Sensi, began conspiring with an undercover government source they believed was with the cartel. They allegedly discussed using drones packed with C-4 explosives for CJNG operation. When the undercover agent asked what they could do with the drones, Campo allegedly said “We put explosives and we just send it over there,” adding that six kilos of C-4 would be enough to blow up “the whole fucking…” [sentence trails off]

Campo also allegedly told the undercover source that, because of his past work inside DEA’s intelligence and financial units, he still had “connections” within the agency and could advise CJNG on how to evade detection. According to the indictment, he portrayed himself as someone who understood DEA investigative patterns, internal targeting systems, and the vulnerabilities of U.S. financial controls.

Both Campo and Sensi allegedly assured the undercover officer that they could convert cartel cash into cryptocurrency in a way that would appear legitimate, billing themselves as specialists capable of “getting money back” for clients whose assets had been seized by law enforcement.

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It’s ‘Unclear’ How Feds Will Enforce Hemp THC Product Ban, Congressional Researchers Say, Citing Limited FDA And DEA Resources

Congressional researchers say it “remains unclear” how the federal government might enforce a newly enacted law that takes effect next year banning hemp THC products—flagging concerns about a potential lack of resources on the part of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

After President Donald Trump signed appropriations legislation late last month that included language that effectively “reimposes” hemp criminalization, the Congress Research Service (CRS) published an analysis about the policy change on Wednesday.

“While the change to the hemp definition will seemingly alter the legal status of many hemp products currently available on the market, it remains unclear if and how federal law enforcement will enforce the new prohibitions when the new definition goes into effect,” the researchers said.

Part of the uncertainty around hemp is related to the federal approach to marijuana, which has been legalized in some form in the vast majority of states but remains federally illegal as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

“In marijuana’s case, the federal response has largely been to allow states to implement their own marijuana laws despite the fact that state-regulated activities may violate the [Controlled Substances Act],” CRS said. “If intoxicating hemp products persist on the market after the change to their legal status, it is possible they could be subject to the same criminal and collateral issues as marijuana.”

The analysis added, however, that it “remains to be seen” whether FDA will “pursue additional options to remove these [hemp] items from the market.

FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administration “may lack the resources to broadly enforce the laws prohibiting intoxicating hemp products on the market,” it said, adding that congressional lawmakers may also “choose to exercise oversight over federal enforcement priorities regarding state-regulated cannabis activities.”

FDA and DEA, “in coordination with the Department of Justice, have a range of civil and criminal remedies they may use in efforts to exercise control over these activities,” the report says.

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The Trust We Lost: How the DEA Broke Medicine’s Moral Backbone

A Continuation of the Chronic Pain Series

Once upon a time, trust helped define medicine.

When reassurance from your doctor was a hand on your shoulder, not risk; when telling the truth about pain, medication, and the limits of endurance didn’t make you a suspect.

I hate typing this, but those days are gone, and in their place stands a system built on fear, suspicion, and the quiet collapse of compassion.

What you’ll be reading isn’t isolated cries from the dark; these stories are proof of what happens when bureaucracy replaces any judgment from the bedside and when the war on opioids becomes a war on the sick.

Fear Behind the Mask

Incognito, asking to remain anonymous for reasons far too common:

Isn’t that disgusting that we have to live in fear over this? Doctors are suspicious of patients, patients are suspicious of doctors, and pharmacists are suspicious of both. The people who don’t understand will throw “pharma shill” and “junkie” at us for speaking about this very real situation. I have been in this fight for about 10 years, and it keeps getting worse. I don’t know how long it’ll take, but more people need to speak up. 

Incognito’s story stretches back to a childhood illness and a body that betrayed her early, followed by a system that later betrayed her. Nothing major, just pneumonia at six weeks, rheumatic fever at 10, a herniated disc at 14, and years of sciatica after that. She did, through it all, what Americans have been taught to do: work hard, stay tough, and trust that the promise of medicine was solid.

After years of dismissals, she finally received an adhesive arachnoiditis diagnosis, finding herself in the care of one of the few specialists still willing to treat patients targeted by regulators. Even after being hounded for daring to practice compassion, she said, “God sent me an angel.”

The fear she held was vivid.

The addiction industry and the mass tort lawyers, with the help of some NGOs and others, have made torturing us their favorite gig. I was terrified of becoming addicted. I asked my husband to tell me if I showed signs… that never happened.

She did one thing wrong, something that hasn’t even been considered—not once—a crime of trust. That trust, once sacred between doctor and patient, was turned against her.

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Venezuela Announces Capture of Alleged DEA Agent With Massive Drug Shipment

Venezuelan authorities announced on Wednesday the seizure of nearly 3.7 metric tons of cocaine and the arrest of several individuals, including a man they claim is a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent.

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said security forces intercepted a speedboat in the waters off Falcón state on September 14, carrying 100 sacks of cocaine and 2,400 liters of fuel. The operation, which Cabello described as “clean,” ended with five arrests. The detainees were identified as Joel Luis Rodríguez Ramos, Jesús Antonio Quilarte Carreño, Jhonny José Salazar Gutiérrez, Carlos Alberto Bravo Lemus, and Levi Enrique López, who Cabello alleged is linked to the DEA.

According to Cabello, the detainees confessed the shipment was part of a “false flag operation” designed to incriminate Venezuela in international drug trafficking and justify external aggression. “The four detainees are saying they work for the DEA,” Cabello told state television, calling the alleged plan a “maneuver for destabilization.”

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FBI, DEA and others target international drug conspiracy affecting the Tri-State

They say it was enough fentanyl to kill 70 million people.

The feds announced in Cincinnati on Wednesday the breakup of an international drug ring. FBI Director Kash Patel was in Cincinnati for the announcement.

Operation Box Cutter yielded three arrests and the indictments of 22 foreign nationals and four companies in China. The particulars of the operation were disclosed at the FBI’s Cincinnati field office.

“We’re done playing whack-a-mole,” said FBI Director Kash Patel.

He stood with the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio and the DEA, describing how the team unraveled a complex web that was an international drug ring.

“We didn’t just arrest a couple of people,” said Patel. “We charged an enterprise-wide system in mainland China to include dozens of individuals in banks and companies that are responsible for making these lethal precursors and shipping them here. And you should ask yourself this: what other country in the world has a fentanyl crisis? None. Just us.”

Because of that, Patel says the feds focused on the companies that make the drugs used to cut fentanyl. They are based in Hebei and Guangzhou, China, shipping the drugs via U.S. Mail and other standard carriers to Tipp City, just north of Dayton. The drugs are used to mix with fentanyl, increasing the yield multiple times, without losing the potency of the drugs.

“Two were arrested recently in Dayton by our FBI SWAT team. And the third is in another state, and we are coordinating their arrest. So through the investigations, we have seized multiple kilograms of cocaine, methamphetamine, metatomidine, and other drugs,” said Elena Iatarola, the Special Agent in Charge at the FBI Cincinnati Field Office.

Local 12 went to the websites of a couple of the companies indicted. They are still online selling the same drugs to anyone who will buy them. The U.S. Attorney was asked how he expected this to dent the drug distribution network if there is no way to extradite those responsible in China.

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Canada’s Refusal To Cooperate With DEA On Fentanyl “Superlab” Investigation Fueled Cross-Border Tariffs  

President Trump’s new hemispheric defense strategy, stretching across North, Central, and South America, now includes the deployment of 4,000 troops and three guided-missile destroyers positioned in international waters off Venezuela, as part of a broader campaign to dismantle command-and-control hubs of narco-terrorists and purge Chinese-linked drug and money-laundering networks from the region. 

Last week, the Pentagon positioned three Aegis guided-missile destroyers (the USS Gravely, USS Jason Dunham, and USS Sampson) directly off the coast of Venezuela as new force posturing takes hold in the region, with the Pentagon’s crosshairs focused on narco-terrorists fueling America’s drug death crisis that claims 100,000 lives per year. 

Simultaneously, attention turns to Canada, which, like Mexico and other surrounding countries, remains a very weak partner in the region as the Trump administration advances its hemispheric defense strategy to clean up the Americas ahead of the 2030s. Trump’s cleanup of the Western hemisphere is almost comparable to his micro efforts to restore law and order in crime-ridden Washington, D.C. – and soon, in many other cities nationwide left in ruins by failed Democratic leadership that allowed violent crime and open-air drug markets to flourish. 

Sam Cooper of the investigative outlet The Bureau has uncovered in recent years that North America’s fentanyl crisis is not just a drug death crisis wiping out military-aged men and women by the hundreds of thousands – it’s also a sprawling international money-laundering machine, run through Chinese Triads, Mexican cartels, and Canadian financial networks in a massive transnational crime web that fuels the crisis. Some view this operation to subvert Washington as Chinese irregular warfare, explained here.

Cooper’s work, as we’ve covered in recent years, spans Chinese narcos using laundering networks via TD bank and other Canadian financial institutions to “Breaking Bad-style” superlabs in Canada to all things China subverting the Americas…

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White House Announces Withdrawal Of Trump’s Drug Czar Nominee Who Embraced Medical Marijuana

The White House has notified Congress that President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)—who has publicly backed medical marijuana access—is being withdrawn.

About three months after Trump picked Sara Carter to become the next White House drug czar, the administration told lawmakers on Thursday that she’s no longer up for consideration for the position.

It’s currently unclear whether Carter withdrew from consideration herself or if it was a decision made by the president. Marijuana Moment reached out to the White House for comment, but a representative did not respond by the time of publication.

The notice published in the Congressional Record about the withdrawal of the nomination reads:

“WITHDRAWAL

Executive Message transmitted by the President to the Senate on June 26, 2025 withdrawing from further Senate consideration the following nomination:

SARA CARTER, OF TEXAS, TO BE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL DRUG CONTROL POLICY, VICE RAHUL GUPTA, RESIGNED, WHICH WAS SENT TO THE SENATE ON MAY 6, 2025.”

There was some enthusiasm about Carter’s nomination among cannabis reform advocates, as she’s previously called medical marijuana a “fantastic” treatment option for seriously ill patients and said she doesn’t have a “problem” with legalization, even if she might not personally agree with the policy.

Given the role of ONDCP director in setting and carrying out the administrative agenda on drug policy issues, the fact that Carter went on the record enthusiastically endorsing medical cannabis represented a welcome development for advocates amid Senate confirmations of other officials with a mixed bag of marijuana records.

Under longstanding federal statute, the drug czar is prohibited from endorsing the legalization of Schedule I drugs in the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), including marijuana. However, Democratic congressional lawmakers in April filed a bill that would remove that restriction.

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DEA Judge Sides With Agency On Proposal To Ban Two Psychedelics Despite Challenge From Scientific Researchers

A Drug Enforcement Administration judge has formally sided with the agency in its attempt to ban two psychedelic compounds that researchers say hold significant therapeutic potential, recommending that they be placed in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

In a ruling on Friday, DEA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Paul Soeffing said he advised the agency to move forward with its plan to place the psychedelics—2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine (DOI) and 2,5-dimethoxy-4-chloroamphetamine (DOC)—in Schedule I.

This follows administrative hearings where researchers and advocates, including Panacea Plant Sciences (PPS) and Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), have fought against DEA to ensure that the psychedelics can continue to be utilized in research.

But in the 118-page ruling, Soeffing ultimately said that “the record contains substantial evidence regarding the eight factors required for consideration under 21 U.S.C. § 811(c) to support recommending the scheduling of DOI and DOC,” referring to an administrative standard for determining the health risks and benefits of substances before when placing them in the CSA.

“Furthermore, I find that the record contains substantial evidence regarding the three factors required for consideration under 21 U.S.C. § 812(b)(1) to support recommending the placement of DOI and DOC in Schedule I,” he said, adding that the fact that the United Nations put DOC specifically on its own controlled substances list justifies its prohibition.

The bulk of the recommendation, which must be approved by the DEA administrator before potentially being codified, recounts the competing arguments between DEA and organizations opposing the scheduling action. But this ruling could reignite an ongoing legal challenge that PPS levied against the agency, challenging the fundamental constitutionality of the ALJ proceedings in drug scheduling rulemaking.

“It’s not a surprise that a DEA employee would side with the DEA,” PPS CEO David Heldreth told Marijuana Moment on Friday. “We find that the supposed impartiality of the judge is highly questionable due to that, and we plan to appeal this ruling and continue our lawsuit against the DEA.”

SSDP was among stakeholders who requested the psychedelics hearing in the first place, in hopes of challenging what they view as a lack of evidence justifying DEA’s proposed ban. Researchers have pointed out that DOI and DOC, as currently unscheduled substances, have been key components in psychedelics research that show potential in the treatment of anxiety and depression, for example.

Researchers have also argued that DEA has failed to meet the statutory burden of demonstrating that either psychedelic compound has high abuse potential. There are no documented cases in medical literature of “distressing responses or death” related to human consumption of DOI, nor has there been any established evidence of a high risk of dependence, SSDP said in a pre-hearing filing in July.

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DEA Judge Shuts Down Cannabis Manufacturing Case Without Hearing, Company Plans Legal Challenge

The company behind the application, MMJ BioPharma Cultivation, is now preparing to challenge the ruling in federal court and call for the judge’s recusal.

The ruling was issued by DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge John Mulrooney II, who dismissed the company’s bid for a marijuana bulk manufacturing license after more than six years of delays. MMJ BioPharma said the decision came without warning and without any opportunity to present evidence or respond to agency claims—calling it a “procedural ambush.”

“This isn’t regulation—it’s an illegal ambush,” said MMJ CEO Duane Boise, who said the company had complied with all requirements under the Controlled Substances Act and FDA pathways.

MMJ, which is developing cannabis-based medicines for Huntington’s disease and multiple sclerosis, submitted a legally binding supply agreement in March 2024 with a DEA-licensed Schedule I facility. The agreement included specific sourcing protocols, defined volume, and DEA Form 222 compliance. Despite that, Mulrooney’s June 16 ruling ignored the document entirely and blocked it from being entered into the record.

Boise accused the DEA of demanding the agreement and then refusing to acknowledge it once submitted. “The agency cannot demand a document, receive it, then declare it irrelevant behind closed doors,” he said.

The order also reversed a previous determination by another administrative judge that certain disputed facts warranted a hearing. Instead, Mulrooney cited internal communications from a DEA investigator that MMJ was never allowed to challenge or respond to—raising concerns of ex parte communications and due process violations.

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USSS Ordered Destruction Of White House Cocaine Day After Closing Case

Two years after the U.S. Secret Service discovered a bag of cocaine in the White House in July, 2023, documents showing orders for its destruction within 24 hours after the agency closed the case are raising new questions about the scrupulousness of the investigation.

A U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency document titled “Destruction” states that the bag of cocaine was sent to the Metropolitan Police Department for incineration. That document, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, doesn’t display a date for the destruction. But other internal Secret Service records show that the cocaine was tested by the Secret Service, the D.C. Fire Department hazmat technicians, and the FBI before being sent back to the Secret Service for storage on July 12. Two days later, it was transferred to the D.C. police department for destruction. The Secret Service shut down the cocaine investigation 11 days after discovering it.

The destruction of narcotics evidence must comply with environmental and safety regulations, and the D.C. police department has an Environmental Protection Agency-approved incinerator that federal agencies often use to destroy narcotics that are not involved in active legal cases.

D.C. police officials referred all questions about the cocaine’s apparent destruction to the FBI. There’s no entry or date for the cocaine’s actual destruction.

Early last week, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino announced that he was re-opening the investigation into the cocaine found in the White House, as well as the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and the discovery of a pipe bomb at the Democratic National Committee headquarters on Jan. 6, 2021.

Bongino reiterated his commitment to getting to the bottom of those cases in a Wednesday night interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

“Well, I get a kick out of it on social media,” Bongino said. “People say, ‘This case isn’t a big deal. I don’t care.’ Well, I care. … You don’t care that a [potentially] hazardous substance made its way into the White House? We didn’t know what it was, and we don’t seem to have answers? Well, we’re going to get them. I’ve got a great team on it.”

While the cocaine bag found in the White House appears to have been destroyed, internal Secret Service documents show that the agency retained and stored a second piece of evidence, an envelope of three tubes of DNA that the FBI attained from the plastic bag of cocaine. It’s unclear how much DNA those tubes contain, though the Secret Service has stood by its statements that the FBI found insufficient DNA to pursue any investigative leads.

When the Secret Service closed its investigation into who left the cocaine in the White House on July 13,  the agency issued a statement explaining its decision. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi asserted that camera surveillance footage didn’t provide any “investigative leads or any other means for investigators to identify who may have deposited” the cocaine in the White House, adding that FBI laboratory results “did not develop latent fingerprints and insufficient evidence was present for investigative comparisons.”

But neither the FBI nor the Secret Service has publicly released the FBI laboratory results, and DNA experts say the only fool-proof way to demonstrate whether sufficient DNA existed on the baggie now to run against hits in national and state criminal DNA databases is to test it again.

“The only way to really tell, is to test it again and see what happens,” Gary Clayton Harmor, chief forensic DNA analyst at the Serological Research Institute in Richmond, California, told RCP. “Some labs will test anything, and others are more reluctant if they think it’s not a good enough sample to [test against national DNA databases]. The FBI, knowing them, they’re probably very conservative, and it may be that they said, ‘Nope, there’s not enough here to do anything meaningful with.’ It really depends on who’s doing the testing and how they did it.”

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