Feds charge DEA agent with trafficking drugs, guns with gang
CHICAGO (AP) - A former suburban Chicago police officer is accused of trafficking drugs and guns to a violent international street gang and then joining the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency so he could continue to do so.
Forty-one year old Fernando Gomez was arrested Tuesday in Chicago - the same day a superseding indictment was unsealed in New York that charges him with taking part in a racketeering conspiracy with a gang known as La Organizacion de Narcotraficantes Unidos. In the indictment, federal prosecutors allege that while Gomez was a detective in Evanston, Illinois, he obtained guns from drug dealers he was investigating and then provided them to the gang's leader in Puerto Rico. The indictment alleges he joined the DEA in order to "help members of the narcotics conspiracy."
Gomez was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday afternoon.