MIAMI (AP) — Federal prosecutors are expanding their investigation into a bribery scheme involving two former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration supervisors, turning their attention to two Miami defense attorneys suspected of profiting from repeated leaks of confidential DEA information.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan filed court papers Monday accusing the lawyers of bankrolling the scheme and asking a judge to allow prosecutors to review nearly 1,000 emails, text messages and recordings of protected phone calls between the attorneys and Manny Recio, a former DEA agent who later worked for the attorneys as a private investigator.
Attorneys’ communications with their clients and members of their investigative team are confidential and typically off limits from law enforcement, unless they are being used to carry out criminal activity. But federal prosecutors took the unusual step this week of asking a judge to invoke the “crime fraud exception” to this privilege, calling the communications between Recio and attorneys David Macey and Luis Guerra “integral to the bribery scheme.”