Some Federal Informants Minted as Millionaires

Tens of thousands of informants have helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Administration by giving inside information about crimes — collecting $531 million to do so in recent years. In some cases, informants have continued to commit crimes while collecting this money. 

The FBI paid informants $294 million between 2012 and 2018, and the DEA paid at least $237 million between 2011 and 2015, according to federal audits scoured by OpenTheBooks.com and published at Forbes.

While the data is a several years old, it’s the most recent available.

Some informants even became millionaires, collecting taxpayer money to squeal on their colleagues.

The Department of Justice Inspector General noted that one DEA informant was an “airline employee who received more than $600,000 in less than four years, and a parcel employee who received over $1 million in five years.”

One Amtrak employee was paid $962,615 between 2010 and 2015 to be a confidential source, which the Inspector General called “a substantial waste of government funds” because the intel “could have been obtained by DEA at no cost through a joint task force with the Amtrak Police Department.”

Federal informants often commit crimes, and often do it with the permission of their handlers, according to a 2015 General Accountability Office audit.

“For example, in the appropriate circumstance, an agency could authorize an informant to purchase illegal drugs from someone who is the target of a drug-trafficking investigation,” the audit states. “Such conduct is termed ‘otherwise illegal activity.’”

Informants have been found to be involved in both the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol Building riot and the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.