A longtime DEA informant has avoided prison after admitting he didn't pay taxes on nearly $4 million earned for undercover work. Andres Zapata was sentenced in Austin, Texas, to time served after agreeing to cooperate against federal agents in a misconduct investigation.
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Here are some alternativesFamilias estadounidenses impugnan ley italiana que limita ciudadanía por ascendencia | This undated photo obtained by The Associated Press shows Andres Zapata, a confidential informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration from 1998-2020. This undated photo obtained by The Associated Press shows Andres Zapata, a confidential informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration from 1998-2020. This undated photo obtained by The Associated Press shows Andres Zapata, a confidential informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration from 1998-2020. This undated photo obtained by The Associated Press shows Andres Zapata, a confidential informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration from 1998-2020. This undated photo obtained by The Associated Press shows Andres Zapata, a confidential informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration from 1998-2020. This undated photo obtained by The Associated Press shows Andres Zapata, a confidential informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration from 1998-2020. MIAMI — A longtime informant who traveled the world partying with rogue U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents avoided a prison sentence this week after admitting he failed to pay taxes on nearly $4 million he received for years of undercover work. Andres Zapata was sentenced Wednesday in Austin, Texas, to time served after agreeing to cooperate in a decade-long investigation that has implicated several agents in misconduct, according to two people who weren’t authorized to discuss the ongoing inquiry and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Zapata, 48, was extradited to the U.S. last year from his native Colombia, where he had worked closely with José Irizarry, a former DEA agentThe DEA paid Zapata, a professional money launderer, $3.8 million from 2015-2020 for his work as a confidential informant, court records show. He pleaded guilty last July to a single charge of failing to report those earnings on his tax returns. Informants are required by the DEA to report such income to the IRS but are rarely prosecuted for failing to do so. The Justice Department’s criminal division, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment. The DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Zapata’s lawyer, Don Bailey, argued at the sentencing hearing that it was unusual for prosecutors to target someone who had risked their life helping U.S. law enforcement combat violent cartels for an offense he didn’t even know he was committing. Zapata and other informants “don’t get 1099s or W-9s,” Bailey said, referring to forms typically filed by independent contractors to report income. “You don’t know what you owe. You sign a piece of paper for money. You don’t get receipts.” At the hearing, Zapata told a federal judge he was ready to move forward with his life after having spent over a year in a rough prison near his hometown of Medellin awaiting extradition.U.S. District Judge David Ezra described Zapata at the hearing as having been “very cooperative” with the government. He denied a request by the AP to unseal sentencing records. In sentencing Zapata to time served in Colombia, the judge also ordered the former informant to pay $1.2 million in restitution, an amount reflecting the tax loss to the U.S. government. Internal DEA records obtained by the AP show the agency first signed up Zapata as an informant in 1998, employing an erstwhile vacuum salesman whose brother-in-law got jammed up for drug trafficking. Over the next two decades, he became one of the agency’s most prolific informants, arranging covert cash pickups and assisting in investigations from Peru to Los Angeles, the records show, earning more than $4.6 million from the DEA.Under the cover of a DEA assignment, the Colombian-American dual national crisscrossed the globe with agents and sometimes prosecutors from Miami in what Irizarry has described as a “world debauchery tour” thatagents used to revel in their three-continent joyride details Zapata’s role procuring prostitutes — and helping what Irizarry coined “Team America” get out of trouble. In 2018, Zapata had been on assignment in Madrid drinking with an agent who was briefly detained and accused of sexually assaulting a woman. Irizarry told investigators that Zapata kicked back some of the reward money he earned as an informant. He recalled a night Zapata showed up at his apartment in Colombia with a bag containing $40,000 in cash — money Irizarry used to purchase a Tiffany ring for his wife.Diego Marin — a one-time DEA informant arrested in 2024 in Spain as part of a Colombian bribery investigation. Marin and Zapata appear in a video obtained by the AP partying with agents at a Madrid restaurant.Goodman is a Miami-based investigative reporter who writes about the intersection of crime, corruption, drug trafficking and politics in Latin America. He previously spent two decades reporting from South America.
Jos Irizarry U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Taxes General News Colombia Latin America Florida TX State Wire FL State Wire Texas Central America South America Extradition Miami Business U.S. News Diego Marin Money Laundering Espionage Don Bailey Austin Prisons David Ezra U.S. News
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