EX-OFFICER AVOIDS PRISON IN FRAUD

Dallas: Ex-Wife Gets Jail For Fake Passport; Drug Testimony Cut

A federal judge sentenced a 37-year-old former Dallas police officer
to two years' probation after he pleaded guilty to helping his former
wife obtain a fraudulent passport.

U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade also sentenced Moraima Carrette
Martinez, a native of Mexico who was in the U.S. illegally, to 20
months in prison during a joint hearing Wednesday with her former
husband, Jose Luis Cabrera, who recently filed for divorce.

Prosecutors had argued in previous court hearings and filings that Mr.
Cabrera was tied to drug activity with his former wife, but no drug
charges were ever brought in the case, which centered on the passport
crimes.

After four hours of testimony and arguments, the judge seemed
unimpressed with the government's drug testimony, cutting it off
before all the prosecution's witnesses had made it to the stand.

"There's just really no evidence about what you knew or didn't know
about the drugs," Judge Kinkeade told Mr. Cabrera after sentencing the
former policeman to probation on the passport charges.

Mr. Cabrera, an 11-year Dallas police veteran, was fired in December
after a federal grand jury returned an indictment accusing him of
conspiring with his former wife to commit passport fraud. He pleaded
guilty after both of them were arrested in November.

Ms. Martinez also pleaded guilty to obtaining a driver's license and
passport under a fake name.

The judge chastised Mr. Cabrera. "You had to know when you married
this woman she was trouble," he said. "Sometimes policemen think
they're too big for their britches."

Mr. Cabrera told the judge that his wife was engaged in activities
behind his back, including extramarital affairs.

"There were signs that I was played for a fool," said Mr. Cabrera, a
former sergeant in the U.S. Army and a native of Colombia. "At no time
have I ever been a danger to society."

Mr. Cabrera did not comment after Wednesday's hearing, but he offered
well-wishers a thumbs-up and a grin after receiving probation.

Prosecutors alleged that Ms. Martinez's drug ties began well before
she met Mr. Cabrera. In the late 1990s, Ms. Martinez became a
cooperating witness in a Dallas marijuana trafficking case that sent
another woman to prison for life.

That suspect's daughter, Anahi Osorio-Benitez, later became a
confidential informant after she was threatened with drug charges in a
separate case.

At some point, Ms. Osorio-Benitez's informant work led her to a woman
named Nancy Valencia, who was friends with Ms. Martinez and one of
many people who frequented the Cabreras' spacious home in Rowlett. By
this time, 2004, Ms. Martinez was married to then-Officer Cabrera.

When Ms. Osorio-Benitez told her Drug Enforcement Administration
handlers that there may be drug trafficking going on in the home of a
Dallas police officer, they set out to investigate.

In October 2004, DEA agents wired Ms. Osorio-Benitez as she bought a
$1,200 bag of methamphetamines from Ms. Valencia at the Cabreras'
house. But Mr. Cabrera was upstairs at the time, and neither he nor
his wife witnessed or took part in the brief transaction, according to
testimony Wednesday.

Then, in April 2005, Mr. Cabrera, desperate for his wife to avoid
deportation to Mexico, contacted the DEA and offered to have his wife
share what she knew about local drug trafficking in exchange for legal
immigration status.

No immigration deal was reached.

The closest the government got to connecting Mr. Cabrera to drug
trafficking was an episode in which he drove his wife and others,
transporting $50,000, across the border into Mexico.

"He did know and did participate in the drug dealing," prosecutor
David Jarvis told Judge Kinkeade on Wednesday.

But no witnesses testified that they knew firsthand whether Mr.
Cabrera knew what his wife was doing or what was going on in his house.

"What the government has tried to turn this case into is drugs," said
Patrick McClain, Mr. Cabrera's attorney.

"They tried to put something on him."