Coral Gables cop indicted on bribery charges linked to two convicted ex-DEA agents
Edwin Pagan III began his law enforcement career with the Coral Gables Police Department in 1997 and worked as an officer and detective, but he also spent a decade as a deputized special agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
It was in 2019, as a DEA task force officer, that Pagan crossed the “thin blue line,” federal prosecutors say.
In a new indictment, Pagan is charged with playing a supporting role in a conspiracy to bribe a DEA supervisor in Miami with tens of thousands of dollars for access to confidential information about drug-trafficking suspects. The secret intelligence was then passed on to a retired DEA agent so he could share it with a couple of Miami defense attorneys who worked with the agent to recruit and represent new clients, the indictment says.
Suspended from Gables Police
The 52-year-old Coral Gables police veteran, who pleaded not guilty to an eight-count indictment on Monday, has been suspended from his patrol officer’s job without pay pending the outcome of an internal affairs investigation, according to the department. As part of the corruption case, he’s also charged with perjury stemming from making “false statements” during his testimony in a federal trial that ended last year with the convictions of the two former DEA agents.
A Manhattan federal jury reached unanimous guilty verdicts on corruption charges for Manuel Recio, who retired from the DEA in 2018 after working as an assistant special agent in charge of the Miami office, and John Costanzo Jr., who had worked as a supervisor in the Miami office as well as in DEA headquarters in the Washington, D.C., area.
Recio, 56, was sentenced to three years in prison and Costanzo Jr., 50, to four years in the $100,000 bribery scheme that played out in South Florida and New York between October 2018 and January 2020.
Pagan, who’s portrayed in the federal indictment as a bag man and a buffer between the two men, has become the third defendant to be prosecuted in the Southern District of New York. The 13-page indictment charges Pagan with conspiracy to bribe a public official, bribing a public official, conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud, honest services wire fraud and perjury.
Provided confidential DEA information, feds say
The indictment alleges Pagan and others “paid and assisted in paying bribes to a senior level special agent with the Drug Administration in return for Agent 1 [Costanzo] providing nonpublic, confidential DEA information.”
“Pagan, while employed as a task force officer and a local police detective, participated in the bribery conspiracy by, among other things, acting as an intermediary for tens of thousands of dollars in bribes paid to Agent 1 [Costanzo] in order to conceal direct links between the bribe payers and the bribe payments.”
On Monday, Pagan appeared before Magistrate Judge Stewart Aaron, entered his plea and was granted a bond of $50,000. Pagan is restricted to South Florida and parts of New York as he awaits trial. He’s also required to surrender all firearms and not handle any weapons.
Pagan’s defense attorney, Christopher DeCoste, declined to comment on Wednesday.
According to court records, this is how the bribery scheme unfolded in the Miami and New York City metro areas:
Upon his retirement in November 2018, Recio began operating a Miami private investigative service, Global Legal Consulting LLC, that catered to South Florida defense attorneys and also helped them recruit clients. According to trial evidence and court records, Recio agreed to bribe Costanzo, who was a DEA supervisor in Miami, in exchange for his providing the private investigator with confidential information about narcotics investigations.
Costanzo gave Recio information about sealed indictments and secret investigations, including the identities of suspects and the anticipated timing of their arrests, court records show. Costanzo also shared intelligence from the Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Information System (“NADDIS”), a DEA database that contains information about targets under investigation.
Recio paid Costanzo for this information, which in turn Recio used to help recruit new clients for two unidentified defense attorneys in Miami.
According to trial evidence and court records, Recio paid Costanzo $2,500 in November 2018, shortly after Recio’s retirement from the DEA in Miami. The payment was funneled to Costanzo through a company owned by a close family member. At the same time, Recio began asking Costanzo to run searches in the DEA database on drug-trafficking targets and investigations.
Soon after, Pagan, who has a black belt in jujitsu and runs a defense training business, JEM Solutions, entered the picture.
On Jan. 17, 2019, the Coral Gables cop, who was working as DEA task force officer, reached out to a defense attorney by text message to attend a meeting at a Coral Gables restaurant with him, Costanzo and Recio, according to the new indictment.
The Miami Herald has learned that Pagan contacted Miami attorney David Macey, who is under investigation but has not been charged in the corruption case. He did not return an email request for comment on Wednesday.
Less than two hours before the restaurant meeting that same day, Pagan withdrew a $50,000 cashier’s check from a bank located within walking distance of the establishment, according to the indictment. The check was made out to a “close family member” of Costanzo’s but the money was used toward the down payment on a condominium purchased by Costanzo, the indictment says. Costanzo then “misrepresented” the source of the $50,000 payment to his mortgage broker.
Twelve days later, on Jan. 29, 2019, Pagan and Costanzo discussed via text the creation of a shell company that Pagan “would use to funnel benefits” to Costanzo to keep the bribery scheme going, according to the indictment. On Feb. 14, 2019, Pagan established a bank account in the name of the shell company to “funnel funds” to Costanzo. That same day, Pagan sent the username and password for the shell company to Costanzo via electronic message.
According to the indictment, Recio wrote a check for $10,000 from his investigations company to the shell company in April 2019, and Recio wrote another check for $10,750 in the same manner in June 2019 — all for Costanzo’s benefit in exchange for confidential information on DEA suspects.
During the course of the bribery scheme, Macey, the Miami attorney, traveled with Costanzo, the DEA supervisor, to New York City on April 16, 2019. Macey foot the bill for an expensive dinner and tickets to a New York Yankees game, according to the indictment, filed by prosecutor Sebastian Swett.
“During the game, [Costanzo] sent electronic messages containing pictures from the Yankees game to [Recio],” the indictment says.
This story was originally published November 20, 2024 at 2:21 PM.
