NEW YORK — A former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration supervisor was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison for bribing a longtime colleague to leak DEA information to Miami defense attorneys, seeking to profit from the timing of the charges and other confidential information. on drug investigations.
A federal jury last year convicted Manny Recio of bribery and honest services wire fraud amid a spate of misconduct cases involving DEA agents accused of corruption and other federal crimes. Recio’s former colleague, John Costanzo Jr., was sentenced last month to four years in prison for orchestrating the $100,000 bribery scheme.
“He decided to profit from his connections,” U.S. District Court Judge Paul Oetken said of Recio during a hearing in Manhattan, adding that the bribery conspiracy compromised DEA investigations.
A decorated investigator who worked more than two decades at the DEA, Recio made an emotional apology in front of several family members and said he accepted his conviction. He told the judge that he “lost everything” during the arraignment, including his life savings.
“I don’t even have a credit card, your honor,” he said. “I stand before you without excuses.”
The DEA did not respond to a request for comment.
Recio, 55, retired from the DEA in 2018 but remained close to Costanzo as he began recruiting clients as a private investigator for several Miami defense attorneys.
Prosecutors said Recio was motivated by greed, writing in court documents that his “consumption habits, including the purchase of a 2021 Porsche Macan, demonstrate the motive that led him to seek illegal profits through bribery.”
“The ink on his retirement papers was barely dry before he launched into this scheme,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sheb Swett told the judge. “What they did was engage in law enforcement in secret, through privileged information.”
Following the conviction of the two former DEA supervisors last year, federal prosecutors have shifted their focus to the defense attorneys they say financed the $100,000 bribery scheme, David Macey and Luis Guerra, recently obtaining authorization to look into hundreds of normally privileged communications with Recio. Macey and Guerra have not been charged and did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Much of the prosecution relied on text messages and wiretaps among lawmen, after a former DEA informant returned to attack the same agency that launched his lucrative career as a go-between for drug dealers, prosecutors and defense lawyers.
Recio repeatedly asked Costanzo to look up names in a confidential DEA database to stay abreast of federal investigations that might be of interest to his new employers. The two also discussed the timing of the high-profile arrests and the exact date in 2019 when prosecutors planned to bring charges against businessman Alex Saab, a top criminal target in Venezuela and suspected traitor to the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. .
In exchange, prosecutors said, Recio secretly funneled $73,000 worth of purchases to Costanzo, including plane tickets and a down payment on his condominium in suburban Coral Gables, Florida. The two also deleted hundreds of calls and messages from a portable phone.
Recio’s defense attorneys portrayed the former DEA supervisor as a generous friend and mentor who would not have met Macey and Guerra if not for Costanzo’s introduction. In seeking a more lenient sentence of 18 months, they collected letters from several other defense attorneys who praised Recio’s work as an investigator in complex cases in which defendants sought to cooperate with the DEA.
“His intention was never to undermine the mission of the DEA,” said defense attorney Ronald Gainor. “What we have here is someone who committed lapses in judgment.”
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Goodman reported from Miami.
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