THE BORDER REPORT

How hard up would you need to be to sell someone's life for $2,000? The question came up over coffee with an old friend this morning. The answer, I guess, depends on your situation.

One answer may be given during the corruption case against Richard P. Cramer, the high level Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent arrested earlier this month on drug trafficking charges out of Miami. The case creeps me out. Having been asked to work as a snitch in the past, an offer I happily turned down because being a journalist may pay less but A) gains me hard-earned trust B) isn't mired in sleaze and self-loathing and C) is vastly more entertaining, my name could very well have popped up in the database queries Cramer is accused of sneaking into. A fine mess that would have made.

Court documents in the case reveal a man nearly beholden to a Mexican drug cartel. The former resident agent in charge of ICE in Nogales, Ariz., five years ago, was denied bond in federal court on Sept. 4. He is charged with trafficking more than 600 pounds of cocaine from Panama to Spain in a complex scheme that moved the narcotics up the Eastern Seaboard then across the Atlantic Ocean by merchant ship.

His alleged arrangements with the cartel suggest a man in need of money and willing to take tasks put forward by the cartel leaders, including retiring from his 30-year career as a federal agent in order to dedicate himself to trafficking drugs and laundering cash.

But it's the secondary charges filed against Cramer that interest me. To be fair, nobody's saying that Cramer was selling the identities of criminal informants. The charging documents say he had access to California law enforcement, ICE and DEA databases, able to run queries off those. It's entirely possible he was selling the U.S. Code of federal law, and Peace Officer Standards and Training pamphlets, but I doubt it. If I was a cartel figure and you want to work for me and you have access to internal law enforcement databases, what else would I want to see except the names of those who've betrayed you?

Prosecutors charge Cramer with selling sensitive database queries from ICE and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Mexico. He sold one for $2,000, an amount that just seemed incredible to me. An old friend tried putting that succinct number in some perspective.

"He could have sold those documents for any number of reasons," says a criminal defense attorney I had coffee with this morning. "He could have made those available as a teaser, just to show his new employers 'hey, this is what I could do for you.'"

Maybe; as the guy points out, department stores have utilized that tactic the day after Thanksgiving since before I was born.

If he was selling snitches' names, why haven't prosecutors said so? Authorities said he educated the cartel on how American law enforcement flips informants and the processes behind warrants and record checks. Sometime before he retired from ICE in 2007, a lead figure in the cartel encouraged Padilla Cramer to leave the agency and, instead, go to work for the cartel, authorities said. Federal prosecutors have not identified publicly which cartel Padilla Cramer went to work for.

The Gulf Cartel has shifted its drug market to Europe over the past two years but Guadalajara, where Padilla Cramer worked, is under the control of longtime kingpins “El Azul,” Juan Jose Esparragoza, and Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel Villarreal. Eyebrows were raised across both sides of the border last February when Coronel allegedly visited the Ambos Nogales area. Coronel is wanted by the United States, which is offering a $5 million bounty.

Until he retired, Padilla Cramer led an illustrious career in law enforcement in Southern Arizona. Before taking over the ICE office in Nogales, Padilla Cramer worked in internal affairs for ICE, said law enforcement agents contacted for this story. Sources within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security say Padilla hired two agents to work alongside him in internal affairs.

Regardless of which cartel he was accused of retiring and going to work for, Padilla Cramer took another job, this one with the Santa Cruz County Detention Center. He took the job in May and even went through the Correctional Officers Training Academy in Tucson, sheriff’s office officials said.

According to the 11-page federal complaint, the case began with four unidentified informants working for the Drug Enforcement Agency. An informant within a Mexican cartel was negotiating the sale of 660 pounds of cocaine from Panama City, Panama, to Vigo, Spain, the complaint alleges. A second informant reported that Padilla Cramer and a fourth man were part of the job and had put up $450,000 to ship the cocaine, the complaint alleges. That second man was arrested in South Florida and persuaded to become an informant. He, in turn, gave agents four law enforcement database queries that Padilla Cramer had given him. At that point, he only knew him as “Richard.”

The queries were run off Drug Enforcement Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and California law enforcement databases. Padilla Cramer would ask Drug Enforcement Agency agents to run queries, telling them he needed the information for drug cases he was working on, prosecutors allege .

The cocaine shipments were made to Panama in March 2007, and undercover Panamanian police officers observed the transaction. The cocaine was put on a Greek-flagged ship and sent north, stopping in Georgia, Virginia and finally, the Port of New York two weeks later. The cocaine made it to Vigo, Spain, where it was seized and five members of the cartel were arrested.

Negotiations broke down between Padilla Cramer and the head of the trafficking organization that was looking for someone to blame for the losses in Spain, prosecutors allege. A fourth informant finally approached American law enforcement officials and told them he spoke with Padilla Cramer on a push-to-talk phone. On Aug. 19, the  Drug Enforcement Agency arrested Padilla Cramer at his house in a gated community in Sahuarita.

On Sept. 4, a judge ordered that Padilla Cramer be sent to Florida to stand trial on drug-trafficking charges in that state, said Alicia Valle, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami.

His connections and work in Mexico are being investigated but not his work in Arizona, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement  spokesman Vincent Picard.

That, I'm given to understand, may not stay true. There'll be some new names coming down the pipe, I hear. And Arizona-based federal agents are supposedly on the list. We shall see.