Documents detail ex-agent's ties to drug cartels
By Michel Marizco, Special the Green Valley News
Published: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 4:27 PM MST

Court documents in the case of a well-regarded former federal agent who lives in Sahuarita paint a picture of a man nearly beholden to a Mexican drug cartel.

Richard Padilla Cramer, the resident agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Nogales, five years ago, was denied bond in federal court on Sept. 4. He is charged with trafficking more than 600 pounds of cocaine from Panama to Spain in a complex scheme that moved the narcotics up the eastern seaboard then across the Atlantic Ocean by merchant ship.

His alleged arrangements with the cartel suggest a man in need of money but willing to take any task put forward by the cartel leaders, including retiring from his 30-year career as a federal agent in order to dedicate himself to trafficking drugs and laundering cash.

Charges filed in a Miami court accuse Padilla Cramer of selling sensitive database queries from ICE and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Mexico, including one for $2,000.

He educated the cartel on how U.S. law enforcement flips informants and the processes behind warrants and record checks. Sometime before he retired from ICE in 2007, a lead figure in the cartel encouraged Padilla Cramer to leave the agency to go to work for the cartel. Federal prosecutors have not identified publicly which cartel Padilla Cramer went to work for.

The Gulf Cartel has shifted its drug market to Europe over the past two years but Guadalajara, where Padilla Cramer worked, is under the control of longtime kingpins “El Azul,â€