U.S. PROBE PUTS CLEVELAND DEA AGENT'S WORK UNDER SCRUTINY

In 1992 -- just six years after graduating from St. Edward High School
- -- Lee Lucas tailed two dirty cops through the sand and glamour of
Miami's drug underworld.

Thanks in large part to his efforts, the cops, two cocaine kingpins
and more than a dozen others were ultimately convicted of dealing
bundles of Colombian powder out of a neighborhood bar near the Orange
Bowl.

It was an exceptional beginning to Lucas' career as an agent with the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the agency charged with
enforcing federal drug laws.

But he soon ran into trouble: A federal appeals court said Lucas acted
either "deliberately or recklessly" in misleading a judge about the
track records of the informants he used in the case.

The convictions stood, as there was enough other evidence to support
them. But Lucas' misrepresentations foreshadowed a DEA career that has
been marred by at least a half-dozen investigations of unethical or
unlawful behavior.

He was cleared of any wrongdoing, and Lucas moved from the
air-conditioned DEA offices of Miami to the jungles of Bolivia and,
ultimately, back home to work in Cleveland. Through it all, Lucas made
one major case after another for prosecutors, targeting everyone from
small-town thugs to international playboys.

Now, however, a U.S. Justice Department investigation threatens not
only to ruin Lucas' career, but also to unravel dozens of drug cases
here and overturn scores of convictions.

Geoffrey Mearns, dean of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at
Cleveland State University and a former federal prosecutor, said last
week that Lucas' cases are likely to be examined for
truthfulness.

More difficult, however, is limiting fallout. Federal prosecutors
regularly ask jurors to rely on the truthfulness of federal agents, he
said.

"If the allegations are true, the damage goes well beyond this case,"
Mearns said. "It impedes the ability of federal law enforcement to do
their jobs in this area and across the country."

Lucas looks more like a biker than a cop.

He is squat and muscle-bound, and his unkempt goatee and ragged jeans
make it easy for him to slip into the drug world unnoticed.

Lucas, 39, declined to be interviewed for this story.

After graduating from St. Ed's, Lucas attended Baldwin-Wallace College
in the late 1980s while working as the chief bouncer at the Beach Club
during the Flats' heyday.

B-W College officials said he did an internship with the DEA before he
graduated in 1990 with a bachelor's degree in criminal justice.

About 1991, Lucas joined the DEA, trained at the agency's academy in
Quantico, Va., and landed a plum location as his first assignment -
Miami, the gateway for much of the cocaine flowing into the United
States.

From the beginning, Lucas angled for big fish, investigating
complicated, high-profile cases using equally complicated,
high-profile informants.

One of his first involved a German provocateur dubbed "King Rat" in a
documentary made about the informant's life.

Lucas used the German - who had a reputation for lying to
investigators, helping people escape from jail and committing fraud -
to snare a German count who made a fortune in the Miami real estate
market.

The German count was sentenced to 10 years in prison on cocaine
charges, but a federal judge later threw out the case.

One of the reasons the judge cited was the government's failure -
implying Lucas' failure - to monitor "treacherous informants and
failure to disclose what it knew and had to know about the
informants."

Twice Investigated In Cocaine Disappearance

In the 1990s, Lucas was investigated by federal and local authorities
in the disappearance of 23 kilos of cocaine after agents seized 400
kilos in a large-scale probe of a professional speedboat racer.
Nothing came of the probes.

But Lucas was also criticized by a federal appellate court in the case
of the dirty Miami cops and the Colombian drugs in the neighborhood
bar. In that case, Lucas claimed four of his informants had worked
successfully with police in the past. In truth, only one had. Another
was convicted of lying to police. And a third was a bitter former
spouse with an agenda.

"It is unclear how agent Lucas could have made such statements of an
affirmative character for which there was no basis without having
acted either deliberately or recklessly," wrote the 11th Circuit U.S.
Court of Appeals in Miami.

None of this seemed to slow Lucas' career.

"He was an excellent agent," said Frank Tarallo, the second in charge
of the DEA's Miami office when Lucas worked there. "He worked really
well undercover. He did everything. Today, no one wants to go
undercover. But he did it. He did surveillance, handled seizures and
worked well with informants."

About 1995, Lucas transferred to the DEA's Bolivia unit and took on
even greater responsibilities.

There, he not only trained the Bolivian officers in drug enforcement
but also made sure they seized and destroyed drugs instead of stealing
them. He was also in charge of paying informants.

In Bolivia, Lucas worked high-profile cocaine cases that further
enhanced his reputation. As his South American tour of duty wound down
in the late 1990s, the DEA asked Lucas where he wanted to go next. He
picked his hometown - Cleveland.

He returned in the summer of 2000 as a veteran DEA officer. He had
been investigated and cleared of wrongdoing at least four times in
Miami but had a reputation for turning major cases quickly, no matter
the hours involved.

Agent Becomes Known For Many Arrests, Convictions

Court clerks in Cleveland marveled at his work ethic. They couldn't
believe he was married. They wondered aloud how Lucas found time to
date, let alone establish a relationship.

Lucas was proud of his work.

And despite his own troubles, he routinely criticized how
investigators from other agencies did their jobs, telling friends and
colleagues that some drug agents watched too many drugs move through
Cleveland before making an arrest.

Lucas liked to swoop in fast. Around the courthouse, he was known as
an agent who "makes cases" - arresting lots of people, leading to lots
of convictions.

"He ran and ran and ran," said Marilyn Cramer, a retired federal
prosecutor who handled several of Lucas' cases in Cleveland. "I used
to call him Mr. DEA because he was so good."

Yet trouble followed Lucas to Cleveland.

It started in 2001 when Lucas worked with a cadre of Cleveland police
and state agents who hid a recording device on a convicted drug
peddler-turned-informant named Nathaniel Roberts.

Afterward, they handed Roberts $3,200 and sent him out to buy 41/2
ounces of cocaine from a Cleveland street pusher. Roberts, however,
spent $4,700 on cocaine that day. He gave police some of it but made a
side deal to score some for himself, records show.

Roberts was arrested a few weeks later with the drugs from the side
deal.

Lucas took the street pusher's case and ran to federal prosecutors
with it, never mentioning the tape or the side deal in affidavits.

Angered about being arrested and looking at 20 years in prison,
Roberts tipped off officials. He told them that police allowed him to
buy drugs on the side and that there was a tape to prove it.

A corruption task force of FBI agents and Cleveland internal-affairs
officers began investigating in 2002. When court officials analyzed
the tape, they found it had been tampered with and included only
snippets of the side deal.

Investigation Begins Into Botched Tape

The focus of the task force probe started small: How the tape was
botched and why the federal affidavits never mentioned Roberts' side
deal.

It quickly grew to include allegations that Lucas beat suspects. A
prosecutor from the U.S. Justice Department's public-integrity unit
began presenting evidence to a grand jury, targeting Lucas.

But the DEA intervened.

DEA administrators in Washington, D.C., snatched the case away from
the FBI and said it was up to the DEA to investigate one of its own.

It's unknown what the DEA did . The grand jury investigating Lucas
ended. And Lucas continued making cases - and finding trouble with
informants and recording devices.

In October 2005, Lucas went undercover to target Mansfield drug
slinger Joshawa Webb.

An informant arranged for Webb to sell Lucas crack cocaine in the
parking lot of a gas station.

Webb was later indicted for selling crack to Lucas, who wore a hidden
wire to record the transaction. But when Webb's attorneys reviewed the
tape, they discovered gaps in the recording. The attorneys paid three
experts to analyze the tape.

"The experts agree the interruptions were not accidental," federal
public defender Carlos Warner wrote in a memo to his boss. "The court
expert has determined that Agent Lucas started and stopped the recording."

To find out more, Warner wanted to talk to Lucas' informant in the
case, Jerrell Bray.

Bray, 34, grew up around the Garden Valley Estates on Kinsman Road and
was no stranger to the system. He had spent 14 years in prison for
manslaughter.

In May, Warner found Bray back in jail. He was accused of shooting
another drug dealer.

As Warner walked to the Cuyahoga County Justice Center to visit Bray,
he had low expectations, figuring Bray would dodge his questions about
Lucas, the tape and the crack deal in Mansfield.

But Bray - crying wildly - surprised the public defender.

He told Warner that he could fill a room with the innocent people whom
he had helped put into prison with his lies. His statements, however,
raise questions:

Was Bray trying to destroy a DEA agent's career because he was bitter
the officer could no longer help him? Or was Bray telling the truth?