Lie in court and the DEA still might pay you, audit discovers

WASHINGTON—The Drug Enforcement Administration paid its informants tens of millions of dollars even after at least one of them lied in court.

That’s according to a new report by the Justice Department inspector general, which scrutinized DEA offices across the country. The inspector general’s auditors found that more than 9,000 law enforcement sources had been paid a total of $237 million for information or services.

Yet the DEA, which relies on such informants to investigate drug trafficking, did not “adequately” oversee the money flowing to its more than 18,000 sources between October 2010 and September 2015, Thursday’s report said.

The sloppiness “exposes the DEA to an unacceptably increased potential for fraud, waste and abuse, particularly given the frequency with which DEA offices use and pay confidential sources,” the inspector general’s office said.

The DEA, for instance, prohibits paying informants who were “deactivated” because of arrest warrants or other serious offenses, but auditors found one had been used after being deactivated for lying during trials and depositions. The source was paid more than $469,000 and used by 13 offices for five more years.