Ex-Informant Sues DEA, Customs

A San Diego businessman who acted as an undercover government informant has sued the federal agencies he served, claiming that they abandoned him when he was jailed and tortured in Mexico while posing as a member of an international drug ring.

Kenneth Erickson, 43, filed the suit last week against the federal government and various agents with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Customs Service, charging that they violated his civil rights.

Erickson contends he lost his house and his businesses--in all, more than $2.5 million in assets--because he was kept in a Mexican prison for seven months, ignored by the American agents who he claims authorized his travel to Mexico. He says he wants to be reimbursed for his losses.

The suit, filed in federal court in San Diego, also will raise questions about whether the U.S. agencies were operating clandestinely--and therefore illegally--in Mexico, said Erickson and one of his attorneys, Paul G. Edmonson.

“The government advertises that they want individual professionals to help them track down these drug dealers,” Erickson said. “Lawyers, doctors, accountants, people with business experience. I had a professional business. I helped them, and I really came to some great harm because of it. And they don’t back you up at all.”

David Shaw, the assistant special agent in charge for the Customs Service in San Diego, conceded in a phone interview that Erickson worked two years ago on a joint Customs-DEA investigation. But the services are not responsible for any harm Erickson suffered in Mexico because they did not officially send him there, Shaw contended.

“When people work for us, we give them the same speech over and over again,” Shaw said. “Almost anybody that’s a manager can recite it by heart--that if we instruct you to go, we make the proper arrangements and consult the proper officials, in Mexico and in Washington.

“If we don’t instruct you to go, we tell them, ‘We’re telling you not to go. And, if you do go, you’re on your own. You’re at your own risk.’ In this particular case, that’s what we’re contending.”

Erickson’s suit names as defendants Shaw’s boss, Kenneth Ingleby, special agent in charge of Customs in San Diego, as well as Charles Hill, special agent in charge of the DEA’s San Diego office. Phone calls to Ingleby were referred to Shaw. Hill did not return calls.

Also named as defendants were the agents Erickson said he primarily worked with, Brian Simon of Customs and Douglas Hebert of DEA, as well as the United States government. Simon and Hebert declined comment.

Erickson’s stint as a government informant began in January, 1987, when he telephoned the DEA office in National City and said he had information about what he believed was a drug-smuggling operation, according to the suit.

At the time, Erickson owned several San Diego businesses, including five limousine services, an auto parts store and an airplane charter firm, the suit says. The link to the smugglers was a limousine service customer, it says.

Between January and March, 1987, the suit says, Erickson learned that the smugglers intended to use an airplane to transport drugs into the United States from Mexico.

Since Erickson had an aircraft charter business, the agents told him his knowledge of planes and related paper work could make him valuable to the smugglers and lead to “valuable information” for the two agencies, the suit says.

Erickson agreed to provide that information, the suit says. In return, it says, the agents promised to “supervise and protect” Erickson and to give him expenses as well as 10% of any property seized as a result of information he provided.

Eventually, the suit says, because of Erickson’s clean record, the plane--a twin-engine, turbojet Rockwell Aerocommander--was registered in his name, with the knowledge and secret help of the two agencies.

During the next couple of months, Erickson said, he made three trips to Mexico, but mechanical difficulties with the plane and problems with pilots cut two trips short. The agents knew about and approved both of those trips, Erickson said, and even picked him up once after he called from Mexico to inform them one of the smuggling trips had been aborted.

Erickson’s last trip to Mexico began Sept. 11, 1987. As the apparent owner of the plane, he was to straighten out some paper work with Mexican authorities, who reportedly had impounded the aircraft.

Customs agent Simon directed Erickson to work with DEA agent Hiber, who approved the trip, the suit claims. It is that alleged authorization that the two agencies dispute, Shaw said.

The suit goes on to say that neither the Mexican government nor Mexican police had been told about Erickson’s undercover trip. Erickson did not know that, it says.

After Erickson arrived in Mexico City, he and one of the drug dealers waited for several days at an expensive hotel, El Presidente, while Mexican bureaucrats dealt with the paper work, Erickson said. But, on Sept. 17, as Erickson and the dealer were checking out of the hotel, they were arrested by Mexican Federal Judicial Police.

Simultaneously, eight others involved in the smuggling group were arrested in another city, Erickson said.

Erickson was held for eight days at Federal Judicial Police headquarters in Mexico City, where he was interrogated, beaten and shocked with an instrument resembling an electric cattle prod, the suit says.

Later, he was transferred to a federal prison near Mexico City, the Southern Detention Facility, where other members of the smuggling group also were imprisoned. They had begun to hear rumors of his dual role and beat him, the suit says.

Erickson said he repeatedly tried to call the DEA and Customs offices in San Diego. Once, according to the suit, he reached the DEA office, only to be told by an agent, “You’re no James Bond. . . . I don’t know where you get off calling us from Mexico and charging us long-distance phone bills.”

Erickson languished in prison for seven months, until April, 1988. Erickson said Thursday he was released only after Nancy Reagan, the former First Lady, wrote a letter to the U.S. embassy in Mexico, urging an investigation into his jailing.

Mrs. Reagan apparently was prompted by letters Erickson’s family had written about him to the White House, Erickson said.

Since his release, Erickson said, he has pressed both agencies for money, but to no avail. He also filed formal administrative claims for compensation but, on Sept. 19, those, too, were turned down. “I’ve had nothing but lip service,” he said.

The case has been assigned to Judge Rudi M. Brewster.