Secret DEA files show agents joked about rape in WhatsApp chat. Then one of them was accused of it.

Source: Associated Press

BY JIM MUSTIAN AND JOSHUA GOODMAN
Updated 12:53 AM EDT, July 25, 2024

MIAMI (AP) -- In a WhatsApp chat that quickly devolved into depravity, a group of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents boasted about their "world debauchery tour" of "boozing and whoring" on the government's dime. They swapped lurid images of their latest sexual conquests. And at one point they even joked about "forcible anal rape."

Within months of that jaw-dropping exchange, an agent in the group chat was accused of that very crime.

The 2018 arrest of George Zoumberos for allegedly forcing anal sex on a 23-year-old woman in a Madrid hotel room set off alarms at the highest levels of the DEA, beginning with a middle-of-the-night phone call from a supervisor to the agency's headquarters outside Washington. But U.S. officials never even spoke with the woman and made only cursory efforts to investigate.

The DEA has refused for years to discuss its handling of the arrest, instead telling The Associated Press in response to its questions that "the alleged misconduct in this case is egregious and unacceptable and does not reflect the high standards expected of all DEA personnel."



Read more: https://apnews.com/article/drugs-dea-rape-corruption-fentanyl-opioids-trafficking-649db430c4953a083a7af33ec34b9781

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AP Writer Renata Brito in Barcelona, Spain, and news researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.

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See also this related AP article on José Irizarry, "an agent in the group chat considered the ringleader of the debauchery and perhaps the most corrupt agent in the DEA’s 50-year history"

https://apnews.com/article/soccer-sports-la-liga-money-laundering-puerto-rico-38aed2da8cd0ac237aca28aa39321105