Police Informant Pleads Guilty to Drug Possession

A former Los Angeles police informant pleaded guilty in Houston on Tuesday to possessing cocaine with the intent to distribute.

George Melvin Stephens, 28, of Chatsworth faces up to 15 years in prison when sentenced Oct. 10 in U.S. District Court in Houston, according to Larry Finder, a prosecutor with the Gulf Coast Drug Task Force.

Stephens began cooperating with police in 1984 after he was implicated by authorities in an alleged conspiracy to smuggle more than 700 pounds of cocaine into Los Angeles through Brownsville, Tex. But police dropped him as an informant after he was arrested in New Mexico last March when U.S. Customs agents found 50 pounds of cocaine in his luggage.

Stephens claimed he was forced to carry the cocaine by drug traffickers he had met in Miami at the request of the Los Angeles Police Department. But Texas prosecutors and Los Angeles police said Stephens was not authorized to bring back cocaine and that they suspected that he intended to sell the drugs.

Prosecutors said Stephens’ role as an informant complicated their case, and the New Mexico charges were dismissed. However, Stephens was indicted in the Brownsville case and pleaded guilty to one of several counts of conspiracy and importing cocaine, Finder said.

Stephens, who agreed to work as an informant in exchange for a delay in the Brownsville indictment and the possibility of probation instead of a prison sentence, did not comment during the brief hearing before U.S. District Judge James DeAnda.

Police said that, in the almost two years Stephens worked as an informant, he was responsible for breaking up 10 drug-smuggling operations, which led to seizure of about 230 pounds of cocaine and $1 million in drug profits.

But Finder said Stephens’ work for Los Angeles police will not be a factor in his recommendation at Stephens’ sentencing.

“His limited cooperation won’t affect our recommendation because of what happened in New Mexico,” Finder said. “We’re going to ask for a period of incarceration. How long of a period that will be, I can’t say at this point.”