Customs Agent Took Bribes to Check Federal Databases

Via CNet.com -

A recent court case demonstrates, once again, the dangers of assembling massive police databases and trusting that law enforcement officers with access are paragons of virtue.

In this case, the unvirtuous Fed is named Rafael Pacheco, an agent with the U.S. Customs Service in Florida. And the database in question is the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, or TECS, which contains over a billion records used by Customs and other federal police.

Pacheco was, to put it bluntly, a corrupt cop. He sold access to TECS for money.

What got him caught is when a Mexican man named Fidencio Estrada was nabbed in a traffic stop by state police near Houston, Tex. Estrada had Pacheco's business card with him, and the state trooper asked him about it. After receiving a suspicious answer, the trooper phoned Pacheco -- who called back and said that Estrada was a "huge" confidential informant and demanded that the trooper "let him go now."

You can imagine what the truth was. The U.S. Customs Service, which was subsequently renamed Immigration and Customs Enforcement, would later say that Estrada was never a confidential informant. Instead, Estrada and his family had sent about $18,000 in Western Union money transfers to the customs agent, who deposited the cash in his personal bank account and used it to pay off a vehicle loan with the Florida Customs Federal Credit Union. Estrada is, according to ICE, a drug trafficker.

In return, in February 2000, Pacheco accessed TECS to check for records on Estrada. He searched for Estrada under two aliases and looked up records for those aliases in the NCIC database, which lists outstanding warrants against a person. He also helped Estrada's family members in Mexico obtain visas.

TECS, by the way, is described in a Justice Department report as including a watch list mechanism and, more generally, is: "Designed to identify individuals, businesses, and vehicles suspected of or involved in violation of federal law. TECS is also a communications system permitting message transmittal between law enforcement offices and other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. The database provides access to the FBI's NCIC and the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System. The TECS database serves as the principal information system supporting border management and the law enforcement mission of the DHS's U.S. Customs and Border Protection and other federal law enforcement agencies."

So what eventually happened? Thanks to the happenstance of the traffic stop, the access-for-cash scheme unraveled, and Pacheco was convicted of receiving a bribe, hindering law enforcement, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and unlawfully accessing restricted federal computer databases. He was sentenced to 87 months in prison (and a separate 60-month sentence to be served at the same time).

As for Estrada, who is a U.S. permanent resident, he was found guilty by a jury of conspiring to bribe a public official, conspiring to launder money, five counts of bribery, and ten counts of money laundering. He was sentenced to 41 months in prison, followed by 36 months supervised release.

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In my mind, this is less about the "huge" government database and more about an access issue.

As long as data exist, there will have to be someone to manage it. At this point, it is almost impossible to remove humans from the data storage question. Take Bank database admins as an example. They have access to a wide range of personal data on thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of people.

It is about the vetting process and how people are granted access to these systems.

Even if the database was small and decentralized all over the US, someone (or at least a small group of people) would have access to the majority of the data and if those people can't be trusted...then the size of the database doesn't really matter.

The issue of internal data breaches is very serious and affects both corporations and governments alike.

I am just glad that they caught this guy doing it....just think about the people that are still doing it and haven't been caught.

On a side note, if ICE knows that Estrada is a drug trafficker, then where are the drug charges? Seriously, half of his sentence is supervised release.