Secret DEA files show agents joked about rape in a WhatsApp chat. Then one of them was accused of it

Associated Press

MIAMI (AP) — In a WhatsApp chat that quickly devolved into depravity, a group of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents boasted about their “world debauchery tour” of “boozing and whoring” on the government’s dime. They swapped lurid images of their latest sexual conquests. And at one point they even joked about “forcible anal rape.”

Within months of that jaw-dropping exchange, an agent in the group chat was accused of that very crime.

The 2018 arrest of George Zoumberos for allegedly forcing anal sex on a 23-year-old woman in a Madrid hotel room set off alarms at the highest levels of the DEA, beginning with a middle-of-the-night phone call from a supervisor to the agency’s headquarters outside Washington. But U.S. officials never even spoke with the woman and made only cursory efforts to investigate.

The DEA has refused for years to discuss its handling of the arrest, instead telling The Associated Press in response to its questions that “the alleged misconduct in this case is egregious and unacceptable and does not reflect the high standards expected of all DEA personnel.”

The details of the case and the graphic group chat are outlined in a trove of thousands of secret law enforcement documents obtained by the AP that offer a never-before-seen window into a culture of corruption among federal narcotics agents who parlayed the DEA’s shadowy money laundering operations into a worldwide pursuit of binge drinking and illicit sex.

Zoumberos, married and 38 at the time, maintained the interaction was consensual and, after a jailhouse visit from U.S. Embassy officials, was released and flew home within hours of his arrest. A Spanish judge later dismissed the case, ruling only that the allegations were not “duly justified.” The agent eventually returned to duty with a DEA letter of reprimand chiding him for “poor judgment.”

“I told him very clearly that I didn’t want to have sex,” the woman recently told AP, which does not typically identify those who say they are victims of sexual assault.

The woman, speaking about her allegations for the first time, says her anguish led to severe panic attacks that forced her to drop out of college, and to this day she’s haunted by fears her attacker will return.

“I’m very afraid,” she said, her voice trembling over the phone. “He could try to find me or take revenge.”

‘A very fun game’

Many of the documents AP obtained focus on ongoing investigations following the scandalous 2020 arrest of José Irizarry, an agent in the group chat considered the ringleader of the debauchery and perhaps the most corrupt agent in the DEA’s 50-year history.

But despite his conviction and repeated claims that dozens of others were involved in his scheme to skim millions from money laundering seizures to bankroll a junket of partying and sex, no criminal charges have been filed against any other DEA agents, supervisors or prosecutors allegedly tied to the corruption. The U.S. Justice Department did not respond to questions asking why. More than a dozen, however, have been quietly disciplined or ousted from their jobs.

Irizarry, serving a 12-year federal prison term for laundering money for the very Colombian drug cartels he was sworn to police, has maintained to AP in recent interviews that he was not a rogue agent and accountability is long overdue for the many others who joined him in a wild ride that mocked the DEA’s mission.

“You can’t win an unwinnable war,” Irizarry said before reporting to prison. “The drug war is a game. … It was a very fun game that we were playing.”

That game revolved around the DEA’s undercover money laundering operations, including one codenamed White Wash that was led by the agents in the group chat. It was shut down in 2017 before a blistering internal audit found agents’ globetrotting through the bars, strip clubs and hotels of Paris, Madrid, and the Caribbean was “unacceptable” and rife with corruption.

“The agents would set up one meeting in the city of their choice but in reality were just going on vacation,” reads an FBI investigative report in the files obtained by AP. Other records detailed how agents frequented the red-light district of Amsterdam for prostitutes and recorded “no enforcement operations” whatsoever during a weeklong trip to Norway, a country with one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

In the end, the DEA audit found the five-year operation could claim credit for just five convictions while agents shelled out $900,000 on travel, and $26,000 on meals as they partied around the world tapping a $1.9 million government fund of lawful money laundering proceeds they referred to as their “debauchery piggy bank.”

“It was all bulls—” Irizarry told the FBI, adding that White Wash was compromised from its first day by reports falsified to justify the next party spree. “It was all a novel.”

An unending, degenerate party

The WhatsApp chat, recovered during the FBI’s criminal investigation of DEA misconduct, included five DEA agents identified by AP, one of whom remains with the agency today, and hundreds of exchanges from 2017. Irizarry was the only agent willing to discuss the chat with AP.

The chat backed up many of his allegations that portrayed life in the DEA as an unending, degenerate party. Agents planned DEA travel around binge-drinking and sex with no fear their encrypted messages would ever be read by anyone else. And rather than reporting Irizarry’s misconduct, agents pressed him for X-rated images of his exploits.

“José you’re just smashing ass,” one agent wrote of Irizarry in February 2017, a month into a new U.S. presidential administration. “Nothing wrong with that under Trump. … Your good.”

Before one jaunt, an agent wrote colleagues he was “hoping you’ve organized some welcome p—y for me tomorrow when I land.”

“Tough life this war on drugs,” an agent quipped in one message.

Added another: “Think of how different our experience on the job is than most.”

Federal authorities’ extraction of the deleted chat does not identify the author of every message, but AP identified the senders through context, federal law enforcement records and interviews. AP is only identifying two of the agents who have been accused of crimes: Irizarry and Zoumberos.

Irizarry told federal authorities in 2020 that he had direct knowledge of 15 DEA agents soliciting prostitutes. He attributed the most damning exchanges in the group chat to Zoumberos, the agent briefly jailed on suspicion of sexual assault in Spain.

“Irizarry stated Zoumberos talked about forcing anal sex on hookers,” a Homeland Security Investigations report states.

References to anal sex were so common in the group chat that agents coined a term for it – pancaking – and often accompanied such mentions with an emoji of a stack of pancakes.

“I’m coming old school to pancake a few Colombia chicks,” Zoumberos texted before one 2017 trip.

There were frequent mentions of prostitutes and at least two references to assaulting them and leaving it to an informant to “clean up” the mess.

They also joked about creating a “hooker app” in which agents would sneak prostitutes past everything from a hotel front desk to DEA internal affairs while trying to avoid federal prison.

“These are some expensive bitches,” one agent wrote in an exchange that included the sharing of a prostitute’s phone number. “She’s telling me $1,000 for the night.”

Ben Greenberg, a former U.S. attorney in Miami who reviewed the messages at AP’s request, called them “beyond inappropriate.”

“In the context of such serious criminal allegations, the chats look like evidence of a crime and not just grotesque banter,” he said. “U.S. law enforcement has an obligation to fully investigate this case and to hold anyone involved in criminal activity accountable regardless of their position.”

The lewd texts came even as the DEA was making public promises to clean up its act following a highly publicized scandal in which agents participated in “sex parties” with prostitutes hired by Colombian cartels. That prompted the suspension of several agents and the 2015 retirement of then-DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart.

Misconduct in the 4,100-agent DEA has hardly been isolated. AP has tallied at least 16 agents over the past decade brought up on federal charges ranging from child pornography and drug trafficking to leaking intelligence to defense attorneys and selling firearms to cartel associates, revealing gaping holes in the agency’s supervision.

After Administrator Anne Milgram took the reins of the DEA in 2021, the agency placed new controls on how funds can be used in money laundering stings, and warned agents they can now be fired for a first offense of misconduct if serious enough, a departure from prior administrations.

“The DEA has made significant advancements in oversight measures, disciplinary processes and accountability of personnel,” the agency said in a statement to AP, adding it will “remain vigilant in our pursuit for excellence and integrity and will take decisive action should serious misconduct occur.”

Quiet casualties

The FBI and a federal grand jury in Tampa have been investigating DEA misconduct in money laundering probes for years, following a roadmap sketched out by Irizarry.

Recently, an informant who traveled the world partying with the agents – and was with Zoumberos when he met his accuser at the Madrid bar – was arrested in Colombia on a U.S. warrant for failing to pay taxes on more than $3.8 million in snitch money.

But so far, Irizarry is the only government employee to be charged. The internal records obtained by AP show the DEA disciplined or ousted at least a dozen other agents for either participating in the bacchanalia or failing to sound the alarms about it.

Among the quiet casualties was the head of the St. Louis division who retired amid allegations that he rented a New York apartment for his paramour with DEA funds. Another who quit was a veteran supervisor of the jet-setting agents who lied to the FBI about soliciting prostitutes, according to a law enforcement official who wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation.

The DEA records also contain new details about one agent, Danielle Dreyer, who was fired last year for what the Justice Department called “outlandish behavior” during a rooftop party in 2017 in Cartagena, Colombia, attended by a half-dozen DEA agents and then-federal prosecutor Marisa Darden. An internal DEA investigation found Dreyer used ecstasy and that her antics in a hot tub included squirting breast milk on colleagues, fondling Darden’s breasts and grinding on her supervisor’s lap.

After leaving the Justice Department, Darden was confirmed by the Senate in 2022 to be the first Black woman U.S. attorney in northern Ohio. She abruptly withdrew before taking the position, however, telling AP through an attorney that she did so for personal reasons.

Law enforcement records obtained by AP show Darden had been interviewed by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General just days before she pulled out. Neither Darden nor her attorney responded to requests for comment.

‘I didn’t want him to do this to others’

The overseas rape accusation turned out to be the beginning of the end for Zoumberos, who more than a year after his rape arrest resigned from the DEA after invoking his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination in refusing to testify to the federal grand jury in Tampa.

Irizarry long considered Zoumberos a brother but in his interviews with investigators accused his former partner of a list of crimes, including that he used DEA snitch money to buy a personal boat.

“Zoumberos could do whatever he wanted and would not get caught because he was in charge of the AGEO,” Irizarry told the FBI, using the acronym for the money laundering probes, Attorney General Exempt Operations.

Zoumberos’ attorney, Raymond Mansolillo, has called Irizarry a serial liar and previously told AP that federal authorities were “looking to find a crime to fit this case as opposed to a crime that actually took place.”

On the night of the alleged sexual assault in Spain in April 2018, Zoumberos and a partner ate dinner with an informant at an Irish pub in Madrid, according to DEA records, and Zoumberos told authorities the woman later approached him at the bar.

The woman told AP that, over drinks, Zoumberos showed her smartphone photos of him fishing and playing with his dogs.

“He seemed like a good person,” she recalled.

The conversation was pleasant, she said, and she lost track of time. With the subway closed, Zoumberos made what seemed like a gentlemanly offer.

“He told me, ‘Don’t worry, you can sleep in my hotel room. We’ll watch a movie and in the morning you can catch the metro,’” she told AP. “Honestly, I was a student and I didn’t have 60 euros to pay for a taxi home.”

Around 1:30 a.m., the two walked a few blocks to Zoumberos’ government-paid hotel. The woman said she told Zoumberos she could not have sex because she was having her period. Zoumberos told the DEA that she agreed to consensual sex and was “never upset.”

About 3 a.m., the woman said, police and an ambulance arrived and found her bruised around the wrists and Zoumberos very drunk. She told AP she locked herself in the bathroom before fleeing the hotel through the fire exit in a state of utter shock.

A few hours later, the DEA chief in Spain placed an urgent telephone call to the agency’s command center outside Washington. Records show nearly three dozen DEA officials were eventually notified of Zoumberos’ arrest, including then-acting administrator Robert W. Patterson.

Within hours, the U.S. Embassy in Madrid dispatched a small delegation to visit Zoumberos in jail. What happened next is unclear. The U.S. State Department didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment and would not release any records related to its response. The DEA also denied Freedom of Information Act requests for records of Zoumberos’ arrest, citing the former agent’s privacy.

A day after his arrest, Zoumberos was released without bail with only an order to stay away from his accuser and he quickly caught an American Airlines flight home to Tampa. There’s no record of why the judge didn’t seize his passport.

Six weeks later, the case was dismissed at prosecutors’ request. Judge Enrique De la Hoz Garcia determined the allegations were not “duly justified” but didn’t elaborate, according to Spanish court records. He and prosecutors did not respond to emails seeking further comment.

Back in Tampa, the DEA opened an internal investigation and suspended Zoumberos from normal duties. But within a few months, his firearm and top-secret clearance were returned and Zoumberos resumed his job with a letter reprimanding him for showing “poor judgment.”

“As a DEA Special Agent, you are held to a higher standard of personal conduct and must take responsibility for your actions,” read the letter, which under DEA policy was to be removed automatically from the file after two years.

Zoumberos, who now lives in North Carolina, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Internal records and interviews show the DEA never spoke with the woman or attempted to reconstruct what happened the night of the alleged rape. The records indicate the ranking DEA official in Spain did not even have the accuser’s contact information and make no mention of any inquiries with Spanish authorities to obtain it.

The records also don’t mention any efforts to secure surveillance footage from the hotel or the results of medical examinations that the woman says would have corroborated her account.

“We dropped the ball,” a law enforcement official familiar with the matter told AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss internal investigations.

About a year ago, the woman said she was approached by Spanish police asking if she would be willing to speak to the FBI as part of its broader probe of misconduct in the DEA.

At first, she said yes.

“I didn’t want him to do this to others,” she said.

But her willingness to speak out eventually gave way to fear of the powerful man she was confronting.

“I don’t want to reopen this,” she said. “I want to forget it.”

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AP Writer Renata Brito in Barcelona, Spain, and news researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/