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Out of control (cont.) Dangerous alliances The close relationships that federal law enforcement officials sometimes develop with criminals are necessary and treacherous. Mob bosses don’t tend to share information about their criminal enterprises, and often the only way for federal agents to pierce their secretive shell is to develop ties with criminal colleagues. That arrangement can prove slippery. This investigation found dozens of cases where agents became so close to their informers that they crossed the line — sometimes assisting them in their criminal activities or protecting them, or even joining them and sharing in the profits of their crimes. Few safeguards are in place to prevent the practice or, in some cases, to even discipline the most flagrant abusers. For decades, FBI Special Agent R. Lindley DeVecchio oversaw investigations involving New York City’s Colombo Crime Family. He was also the FBI’s lone contact with a key informant in that family, Gregory Scarpa Sr., who was a Colombo captain and a notorious killer. DeVecchio’s superiors and other street agents would be stunned when he was later accused of passing confidential information to Scarpa, helping Scarpa avoid arrest, helping Scarpa punish his enemies, and allowing Scarpa to continue a crime career that included several murders. DeVecchio is even accused of helping fabricate evidence with Scarpa in order to win indictments, convictions and guilty pleas against Scarpa’s enemies. A strikingly similar case unfolded a few years ago in Boston. Associates of James "Whitey" Bulger, one of the city’s most notorious mobsters, could only wonder why he escaped prosecution, even as they were indicted, convicted and imprisoned for the rest of their lives. The reason: The FBI took sides, making sure that Bulger’s criminal enterprise flourished while his opponents were arrested and sent to prison. Just before a federal grand jury was to indict Bulger in 1995, he disappeared and has not been heard from since, casting more suspicions on the FBI and its relationship with Boston’s top mobster. No FBI agents were disciplined in that case nor the New York case. Top agents in charge retired with pensions. DeVecchio has taken the Fifth Amendment in several trials exploring the FBI’s complicity, and because of the FBI’s conduct in Boston and New York, dozens of criminals convicted on the basis of evidence that these relationships tainted might go free. Abuse at sentencing time Federal judges used to determine the sentences of the guilty. They don’t any more. In an attempt to standardize prison time and stop the practice of judge-shopping, Congress adopted strict sentencing guidelines in 1987. The guidelines mandate exactly how much prison time will be served based on the severity of the crime: so many years for a certain amount of drugs sold, so many for a certain amount of money embezzled. This change produced an unexpected outcome: Federal prosecutors and agents now have the power to manipulate the charges a suspect will face and, as a result, the sentences that suspect will serve. That power is broadly abused. For example, when a jury convicted Pogue of closing a land deal with federal agents he thought were drug smugglers, the judge didn’t determine Pogue’s sentence. Those agents did, when they discussed, in his presence, the quantity of drugs they would ship and the price they would pay for the land, making sure that both amounts met the criteria established for major drug and money laundering conspiracies under federal sentencing guidelines. The same kind of strange machinations can be found at the other end of the sentencing pipeline. Judges may not arbitrarily reduce sentences — a prosecutor must request a reduction, usually for a suspect who has cooperated and implicated others. For example, Mary Ann Rounsavall and her brother, James Rounsavall, were charged in 1994 in a multi-million dollar drug operation and money-laundering scheme that stretched from Southern California to Nebraska. The government’s evidence was thin. Prosecutors pressed Mary Ann Rounsavall to testify against her brother. She refused. She was threatened and cajoled, she said. Then came the clincher. Prosecutors told her that her brother was dying. She wasn’t allowed to talk to him, but she was promised a substantial reduction in sentence if she testified against him. Her mother assured her that testifying would be the best course — after all, he would soon die anyway. Rounsavall agreed to the deal; her testimony put her brother away for life, and prosecutors seized millions of dollars in assets from him and his sister. Before sentencing Mary Ann Rounsavall, U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf peered down at the prosecutor, asking if he planned to request a sentence reduction based on Rounsavall’s substantial assistance. Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce Gillen did not offer the motion. Under federal sentencing guidelines, Kopf had no choice but to order Mary Ann Rounsavall imprisoned for 20 years rather than the maximum of eight she’d have gotten with a prosecutor’s recommendation for leniency. Long known as a hard-liner on drug offenses, Kopf described the incident as "horribly wrong." Rounsavall has filed several motions trying to force the government to honor its promises. She said federal agents had given her some of the testimony that had ensured her brother’s conviction. And there’s more: Her brother wasn’t dying. She says federal prosecutors lied about that, too. He is healthy and now serving a life sentence. Defense attorneys targets Defense attorneys have become favorite criminal targets of federal prosecutors, even when they’ve done nothing wrong. This investigation turned up dozens of cases where prosecutors filed questionable charges against attorneys who represented big-name criminal defendants, sometimes sacrificing certain convictions in the process. In 1990, U.S. Attorney Anthony White charged Ciro Mancuso in one of the largest drug conspiracy cases ever brought in Reno, Nev. The evidence against Mancuso, who owned a half dozen homes and estates, was overwhelming. Still, Mancuso’s San Francisco attorney, Patrick Hallinan, filed dozens of motions, accusing White of illegal and unethical conduct in his investigation. White had never taken kindly to such tactics from opposition attorneys — often seeking to disqualify them in court. Then, Mancuso offered a deal. He would implicate his lawyer and others in the drug conspiracy in exchange for a lenient sentence. White jumped at the deal. Hallinan seemed an unlikely drug smuggler. An amateur archaeologist, he was a respected defense lawyer whose father was regarded as one of the finest attorneys San Francisco had produced. Hallinan’s brother was head of the city’s law department. But based on Mancuso’s testimony, Hallinan was soon indicted for drug smuggling, money laundering and racketeering. White wasn’t done. In June 1994, federal agents raided Hallinan’s San Francisco home, looking for evidence that Hallinan had illegally smuggled Peruvian artifacts and other ancient art. Hallinan was acquitted on the drug, money laundering and racketeering charges. No charges were filed after the search of his home, though Hallinan has yet to recover hundreds of documents and valuable pieces of art that agents seized in the raid. Mancuso was sentenced to only 10 years — despite his drug kingpin status and the perjury he committed, but he thought even that was too much. In November 1996, his lawyers appealed the sentence, claiming that White promised him "little or no jail time" for testifying against Hallinan. A 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel disagreed, but Mancuso might still be out of prison in a year and a half.
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