Dad smashes DEA's suspicious brags of multiple 'cartel' arrests: 'He's high-level dumb'

An investigative report found the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has been targeting drug addicts, low-level dealers and unhoused people that federal agents later described as cartel members without notifying them of the allegations in court.

Federal authorities announced they had seized more than 500 pounds of drugs and detained nearly 200 members of Mexico’s notorious Sinaloa Cartel in coordinated raids across New England, but a Boston Globe investigation disproved a claim by special agent in charge Jarod Forget at the time about the suspects they arrested.

“We’re the DEA,” Forget told an interviewer shortly after the August raids. “We’re not going after low-level retail drug traffickers.”

But that's exactly what the newspaper's Spotlight Team found they were doing.

"Forget said the crackdown 'led to 171 cartel member arrests' across the region, including 27 in Franklin," the Globe reported. "The DEA didn’t name any of the suspects, but Forget described them as 'high-level arrests' that were part of a national sweep that netted more than 600 operatives of the feared organization over five days."

But reporters sifted through more than 1,650 pages of court records and contacted more than 75 state, local and federal law enforcement agencies, in addition to knocking on dozens of doors and conducting scores of interviews, and found little evidence the DEA had nabbed "high-level" foreign cartel members.

“I can guarantee that he’s not part of the Sinaloa Cartel,” Scott Alati said of his son, Tyler, who was charged in New Hampshire with a felony-level drug sale. “He isn’t a high-ranking member of anything. He’s high-ranking dumb.”

The Spotlight Team found most of the arrests were casualties of the fentanyl crisis, and while some of the 171 suspects had significant quantities of drugs, there's no evidence that any of them were involved with the violent cartel, although some had no doubt bought drugs Sinaloa members had brought into the country.

“If there had been even a mid-level cartel member arrested, they would have named him, but they didn’t name anybody,” said Mike Vigil, the DEA’s former chief of international operations. “They just said 600-something arrests, as if it were going to decimate the Sinaloa Cartel. The cartel likely doesn’t even know who these people are.”

DEA officials told the Spotlight Team last week they were unable to comment on the findings due to the government shutdown, and attorneys for some of the defendants swept up in the raids were surprised to learn their clients were accused of being members of the Mexican cartel because those allegations were never made in court.

“You are the first person to mention this to me,” said lawyer John Benzan, who represents a man accused of helping to transport about 140 pounds of cocaine to Massachusetts from Puerto Rico – more than a quarter of the total drugs seized in the August raids.