Miami man acquitted of dissing federal drug witness as “snitch” on Instagram

It took less than 30 minutes for a federal jury to acquit Marcos Carrillo.

The 25-year-old Miami man was accused of giving up the name of a convicted government witness in a Molly drug investigation who was later outed on Instagram and dissed as a “snitch.”

But a Miami federal jury this week rejected the prosecution's conspiracy charge that Carrillo gave the witness' name to a friend, who in 2014 posted it online with the informant’s picture under the title, “Snitch Alert.”

After trial, Carrillo's defense attorney, Joseph Rosenbaum, called the U.S. attorney’s witness retaliation case a “waste of government resources.”

Carrillo's friend, Julio Antonio Trejo, was questioned by Drug Enforcement Administration agents who tracked down his Instagram account. Trejo, who tried to implicate Carrillo in an undercover call, later insulted the agents online about their Molly investigation.

Trejo eventually pleaded guilty in late 2014 to tampering with the DEA’s witness in the Molly distribution probe of his friend, Oscar Diaz.

Trejo, 25, was sentenced to three years in prison.

Diaz, 25, who pleaded guilty to trafficking the Molly drug methylone in 2015, was sentenced to nine years.

This story was originally published August 12, 2016 at 8:16 PM with the headline "Miami man acquitted of dissing federal drug witness as “snitch” on Instagram."