FAKE-DRUG INFORMANT: I LIED TO FBI

Another man victimized by the so-called fake-drug scandal in Dallas
recounted his ordeal Monday as jurors heard from two more corrupt
police informants who carried out the scheme to frame people for drug
sales with pool chalk.

Roberto Amador, a 48-year-old painter and self-described former drug
dealer, testified that he was only trying to sell his tow truck at an
Old East Dallas business when police rushed in and arrested him on
false charges of dealing more than 28 pounds of what turned out to be
fake cocaine.

"That's a lie," he said, speaking through a court interpreter, when
asked by federal prosecutors about a line in his arrest warrant that
said he moved "drugs" from his truck to a police informant's car just
before the arrest.

Mr. Amador, who said he stopped dealing drugs in 1999, is the third
victim from the scandal to testify at the federal criminal trial of
former Dallas police detective Mark Delapaz.

The 36-year-old narcotics investigator is accused of lying in arrest
warrants and to prosecutors when he said he personally witnessed drug
transactions. That provided probable cause to keep Mr. Amador and
three others in jail. Mr. Delapaz also is accused of lying to the FBI
about what he saw. He faces 10 years in prison if convicted.

The four cases are among 24 in which drug evidence seized by Dallas
police from April to October 2001 was fake or contained only traces of
cocaine. Local prosecutors dismissed more than 80 cases involving Mr.
Delapaz or his informants as a precaution.

Mr. Delapaz is not accused of knowing that the white, powdery
substances that police seized in the arrests were not cocaine. Three
of his informants, who have pleaded guilty to civil rights violations
and await sentencing, have said they duped the officer in an effort to
make money from police, who paid $1,000 for every kilo of drugs they
helped seize.

Two more of the informants testified Monday. They told jurors a
familiar story - how they conspired to package pool chalk as though it
were real cocaine and how those being arrested had no idea what was
happening when the informants staged deals.

Informant Roberto Santos testified that he lied to the FBI a "bunch of
times," telling the agency investigating his role in the scheme that
he had no idea the drugs were fake.

Unlike the other informants involved in the scandal, Mr. Santos has
not been charged with a crime. He said he confessed about his role
just before he was to take a polygraph exam.

"I was scared," Mr. Santos said. "I wanted to see what was going to
happen."