Documents detail ex-agent's ties to drug cartels

Court documents in the case of a well-regarded former federal agent who live in Sahuarita paint a picture of a man nearly beholden to a Mexican drug cartel.

Richard Padilla Cramer, the resident agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Nogales, five years ago, was denied bond in federal court on Sept. 4. He is charged with trafficking more than 600 pounds of cocaine from Panama to Spain in a complex scheme that moved the narcotics up the eastern seaboard then across the Atlantic Ocean by merchant ship.

His alleged arrangements with the cartel suggest a man in need of money but willing to take any task put forward by the cartel leaders, including retiring from his 30-year career as a federal agent in order to dedicate himself to trafficking drugs and laundering cash.

Charges filed in a Miami court accuse Padilla Cramer of selling sensitive database queries from ICE and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Mexico, including one for $2,000.

He educated the cartel on how U.S. law enforcement flips informants and the processes behind warrants and record checks. Sometime before he retired from ICE in 2007, a lead figure in the cartel encouraged Padilla Cramer to leave the agency to go to work for the cartel. Federal prosecutors have not identified publicly which cartel Padilla Cramer went to work for.

The Gulf Cartel has shifted its drug market to Europe over the past two years but Guadalajara, where Padilla Cramer worked, is under the control of longtime kingpins “El Azul,” Juan Jose Esparragoza, and Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel Villarreal. Eyebrows were raised across both sides of the border in February when Coronel allegedly visited the Ambos Nogales area. Coronel is wanted by the United States, which is offering a $5 million bounty.

Until he retired, Padilla Cramer had an illustrious career in law enforcement in Southern Arizona. Before taking over the ICE office in Nogales, he worked in internal affairs for ICE and once taught ethics courses at the El Paso Intelligence Center, say law enforcement agents contacted for this story. Sources within Homeland Security say Padilla hired two agents to work alongside him in internal affairs.

Regardless of which cartel he retired and went to work for, Padilla Cramer took another job, this one with the Santa Cruz County Detention Center. He took the job in May and even went through the Correctional Officers Training Academy in Tucson, said sheriff’s department officials.

According to the 11-page federal complaint, the case began with four unidentified informants working for the DEA. An informant within a Mexican cartel was negotiating the sale of 660 pounds of cocaine from Panama City, Panama, to Vigo, Spain. A second informant reported that Padilla Cramer and a fourth man were part of the job and had put up $450,000 to ship the cocaine. That second man was arrested in South Florida and persuaded to become an informant. He, in turn, gave agents four law enforcement database queries that Padilla Cramer had given him. At that point, he only knew him as “Richard.”

The queries were run off DEA, ICE and California state law enforcement databases. Padilla Cramer would ask DEA agents to run queries, telling them he needed the information for drug cases he was working on.

The cocaine shipments were made to Panama in March 2007 where undercover Panamanian police officers observed the transaction. The cocaine was put on a Greek-flagged ship and sent north, stopping in Georgia, Virginia and finally, the Port of New York two weeks later. The cocaine made it to Vigo, Spain, where it was seized and five members of the cartel were arrested.

Negotiations broke down between Padilla Cramer and the head of the trafficking organization that was looking for someone to blame for the losses in Spain. A fourth informant finally approached U.S. law enforcement and told them he spoke with Padilla Cramer on a push-to-talk phone. On Aug. 19, the DEA arrested Padilla Cramer at his house in a gated community in Sahuarita.

On Sept. 4, a judge ordered that Padilla Cramer be sent to Florida to stand trial on drug-trafficking charges in that state, said Alicia Valle, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami.

His connections and work in Mexico are being investigated but not his work in Arizona, said ICE spokesman, Vincent Picard.