Federal Agents in the News
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give to the poor. They are known to give generously to schools and local officials.Officials said cartel leaders help Mexican meth addicts seek rehabilitation and oppose the sale of the drug in Mexico, even while exporting it across the border.
La Familia has grown quickly in Michoacan state, an important agricultural state with one of Mexico’s biggest ports, Lazaro Cardenas. It has managed to corrupt local politicians, gain territory in neighboring states like Guerrero and create a drug distribution network in the U.S.
Formed by breakaway members of the Gulf Cartel, La Familia first gained attention in 2006 by rolling the severed heads of five men onto a dance floor at a Michoacan disco, along with a note warning rival traffickers. “We believe it is the cartel that fights authorities with the most belligerence,” Mexico’s top police spokesman told reporters recently.
The U.S. operation highlights how Mexican cartels like La Familia have taken over drug trafficking in the U.S. Unlike Colombian cartels of the past, which transported cocaine from Colombia to the U.S. but didn’t dominate the retail end of the business, Mexican cartels are more vertically integrated -- from growing their own marijuana to selling it on U.S. streets.
While the bust is a blow to La Familia, analysts said the cartel will recover. “They can arrest 300 guys, but 300 new guys will take their place because the market structure is intact,” said Alberto Islas, a Mexico City-based security consultant.
The rise of newer cartels like La Familia may be one of the unintended consequences of Mexico’s attempt to corral its organized-crime syndicates. The arrests of top cartel leaders from groups like the Gulf Cartel created rivalries within cartels and opened up space for new groups to emerge. Both La Familia and Los Zetas, widely seen as Mexico’s most violent drug gang, emerged from the Gulf Cartel.
Tax Whistle-Blowers Await Big Pay Day
NENE W YORK (Dow Jones)--A three-year-old Internal Revenue Service program that promises hefty bounties for information on big tax cheats has succeeded in drawing whistle-blowers. It just hasn’t paid out any rewards yet.
“Some cases are just working their way through,” explains Stephen A. Whitlock, director of the whistle-blower office, in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires. In its second annual report to Congress last week,
the office said it got 476 submissions on 1,246 taxpayers in fiscal year 2008, each of which appear to meet the requirement that at least $2 million in taxes were evaded. Created under the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, it aims to let whistle-blowers pocket between 15% and 30% of taxes the IRS collects.
The picture was less glowing in a report issued this week by the Treasury Inspector General For Tax Administration, which pointed up big deficiencies in the handling of claims.
Dean A. Zerbe, considered a key force in creating the office, says the program will really start getting a response “when they start handing out checks to top whistle-blowers.” Now special counsel for the National Whistleblowers Center, Zerbe was a long-time fraud and abuse investigator for the government and an adviser to Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa.
Zerbe also represents Bradley Birkenfeld, the former UBS AGAG (UBS) employee who touched off a tax-evasion scandal when he informed to the IRS in 2007. Birkenfeld hopes to collect a reward even though he was sentenced in August to 40 months in prison for helping an American billionaire real-estate developer evade $7.2 million in taxes.
Critics of the IRS office say it isn’t doing enough to help whistle-blowers through what often turns into a long and frightening ordeal after they hand over information. They can lose jobs and friends, and feel isolated - even from the IRS - once they’ve handed over information.
“It’s radio silence on the other side,” says Zerbe. T he IRS is strictly limited in what it can tell whistle-blowers about investigations, says spokesman Bruce I. Friedland.
The new office hopes to attract many sophisticated informants, such as highly placed corporate executives. They are more likely to know of, and understand, the complex transactions used to evade very big tax payments. Cracking those cases means big money for the IRS in back payments and penalties.
Many whistle-blowers are not squeaky clean themselves. Rather, they are involved to a certain degree in the questionable transaction. As Zerbe puts it: “You’re not always going to have angels in the room.”
Whitlock says the agency isn’t particularly worried about what motivates informants
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