Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Win at all costs - Informant lured him into a costly deal

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Informant lured him into a costly deal

November 23, 1998
By Bill Moushey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

It was the kind of part-time job that never makes the classified pages.

Albert Barruetta needed money. The U.S. Customs Department needed to nab drug dealers. So Barruetta told agents he had a line on a major methamphetamine dealer in Pasadena, Calif.

Barruetta knew no major drug dealers, but he did know Cristobal Crosthwaite-Villa, a Mexican citizen whose car U.S. Custom’s officials had seized in September 1992 at Tijuana, Mexico, as he was trying to cross the border illegally.

Barruetta tried to fleece Crosthwaite, telling him that for $1,000 he would not only get his car back but would get him permanent residency status in the United States. Then he learned Crosthwaite sometimes used drugs, so he told Customs agents that Crosthwaite was a major drug dealer.

The agency, without checking Crosthwaite’s background, agreed to hire Barruetta as a confidential informant and pay him, on a contingency basis, cash for each drug dealer he could lure into a sting operation.

Barruetta began cajoling Crosthwaite to find him a source who might buy methamphetamine. Crosthwaite had no luck until he encountered Bobby Thomas, who had used drugs with Crosthwaite in the past and, on one or two occasions, had sold Crosthwaite a few $20 doses of the drug.

Barruetta offered to sell Thomas drugs, saying the deal would also get Crosthwaite’s car returned. Thomas told him he couldn’t help. Barruetta kept pressing him with offers to sell him cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine.

Thomas finally relented, agreeing to buy three pounds of methamphetamine in the hopes of helping Crosthwaite get his car.

Thomas, who had no prior criminal record, was arrested, found guilty and sentenced to more than 12 years in prison. The amount of drugs Barruetta had pressed Thomas to buy determined the sentence length.

In January, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Thomas’s conviction, in part because he’d been cajoled and entrapped into committing the crime. He is awaiting a new trial.