SELLING LIES

By `Jumping On The Bus,' Prisoners Earn Time Off Sentences At Others' Expense

The business served a small but eager clientele.

From an office in Atlanta, Kevin Pappas, a former drug smuggler, sold
prisoners confidential information gleaned from the files of federal law
enforcement officers or, in some instances, from the case files of other
convicts.

By memorizing confidential data from those files, the prisoners could
testify to events that only an insider might know and help prosecutors win
an indictment or a conviction.

Well-heeled prisoners paid Pappas as much as $225,000 for the confidential
files, and in exchange for their testimony, prosecutors would ask judges to
reduce the prison terms of these new-found witnesses.

Pappas and Robert Fierer, an Atlanta lawyer, called their company
Conviction Consultants Inc., but a group of defense lawyers in Georgia had
another name for it: "Rent-a-rat."

Federal agents shut down the operation last year. Pappas and Fierer pleaded
guilty to obstruction of justice and income tax evasion in connection with
the scheme. Pappas struck a deal and became a witness for the government
against his former partner. He has not been sentenced, but Fierer was given
a 21/2-year term in prison. So far, federal authorities haven't explained
how Pappas gained access to confidential government files.

Pappas and Fierer aren't alone. A two-year Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
investigation found that inmates in federal prisons routinely buy, sell,
steal and concoct testimony then share their perjury with federal
authorities in exchange for a reduction in their sentences.

Often, these inmates testify against people they've never met. They
corroborate crimes they've never witnessed. Prosecutors win cases. Convicts
win early freedom. The accused loses.

Federal agents and prosecutors have been accused of helping move the scheme
along by providing convicts some of the information.

For years, inmates have warned federal authorities about the practice. One
inmate, Ramon Castellanos, offered to go undercover to trap those who buy
and sell testimony.

Another, Ramiro Molina, wrote the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration,
Attorney General Janet Reno and even President Clinton. "What's become of
innocent until proven guilty?" Molina wondered in one of those letters.
"What has happened to the truth in justice? What are we doing with the law,
bending it to be convenient and to whatever advantage necessary?"

In the meantime, testimony continues to be bought, sold, stolen. In South
Florida, the scam has become so prevalent that prisoners there have crafted
a name for it: "Montate en la guagua."

"Get on the bus," or, as inmates call it, "jump on the bus."

Getting Nowhere

When Molina was arrested for his role in a major drug-smuggling operation
between Colombia and South Florida, he figured he had one way out:
cooperate with the U.S. government.

Long before anyone on the outside knew he had been arrested in a
17,000-pound marijuana venture, he asked to speak with federal agents and
prosecutors. Authorities put him in touch with Special Agent Henry Cuervo
of the DEA, and Molina implicated others in the drug-smuggling ring. For
his cooperation, Molina's sentence was dramatically reduced; even though he
faced a life term, he ended up being sentenced to about eight years.

His statements were true, and prosecutors embraced them as such, Molina said.

But while in prison, Molina saw firsthand how some convicts make a living
off perjured testimony, and he became the first inmate to expose the scheme
in open court.

Neither the U.S. Attorney General nor federal prosecutors answered written
questions about the "jump on the bus" scheme for this story.

Molina described how individuals had paid for information so they could
"jump on the bus" and testify in the drug case against Panamanian dictator
Manuel Noriega and against two other accused cocaine smugglers, Salvatore
Magluta and Willy Falcone.

In the case involving Magluta and Falcone, the largest federal cocaine case
ever tried, Molina said another drug baron, Jorge Morales, invited him to
memorize a package of evidence so he could offer testimony.

Molina passed, but he later decided if he wanted to get out of jail, he had
no choice but to go along with the scheme in another case, he said. That
case involved the Mayas drug-smuggling clan of Colombia, one of the largest
such organizations ever. This time, an inmate named Hector Lopez was the
middle man, Molina said.

"Lopez provided me with vital inside information that came from agent
[Henry] Cuervo from DEA files for me to go to the grand jury on the Mayas
case," Molina told a judge and others in sworn statements obtained by the
Post-Gazette.

"Lopez wrote me a month before in a letter that told me exactly what to
say," Molina told federal authorities. He said Lopez also provided the
information to an inmate named Francisco Mesa, who eventually testified
before the grand jury with the same perjured testimony.

"In July 1994, Francisco Mesa told me that he never knew the Mayas," Molina
said. "I can no longer cover up this wrongdoing. . . . It is in my best
interest to cooperate in the war against drugs, but two wrongs can't make a
right."

Inmate Pedro Diaz Yera corroborated Molina's account. Yera also implicated
Lopez and Cuervo, the DEA agent, in letters he wrote to politicians and
judges.

As a result of Molina's information, he and Yera met with Nelson Barbosa, a
special agent with the FBI. They told Barbosa about what they say was
Lopez's and Cuervo's role in "jump on the bus" schemes. Both men said
Barbosa never contacted them again.

On March 25, 1995, they spoke to another FBI agent, Steven Kling, of Miami.
"We told him the same things we had relayed to Agent Barbosa," Molina said.
"He told me he would get back in touch with us within two to three days."

That was more than three years ago. The two are still waiting.

Buying Time

Luis Orlando Lopez was a player.

When federal agents broke up a major cocaine ring in 1991, Lopez, who is no
relation to Hector Lopez, was carrying 114 kilograms of cocaine and a small
cache of weapons in his car.

Lopez pleaded guilty and was sentenced to about 27 years in the Federal
Correctional Institution at Miami.

Then, he stumbled upon his ticket to freedom. In exchange for his
cooperation, he discovered that his prison term could be reduced
dramatically. Lopez turned to Reuben Oliva, a Miami attorney whose law
practice specializes in negotiating deals for those who provide substantial
assistance to prosecutors in exchange for sentence reductions.

During a court hearing, Oliva pointed out that Lopez provided critical
information to four federal agencies, helping them win guilty pleas against
arms dealers, fugitives, hit men and drug traffickers. "His cooperation has
resulted in the arrest of 13 persons, and he has provided information
regarding two others," Oliva said. "He has provided information regarding
state and federal fugitives, arms dealers, narcotics traffickers, violent
organized crime members, and he has done so at great risk to himself and
his family."

Because of the help Lopez provided, a Florida federal judge, in December
1996, reduced his sentence by 12 years. Lopez will be eligible for parole
next year.

Case closed. But there was a problem. The crimes committed by eight of the
men whom he testified against took place while Lopez was in prison.

How, then, could he have helped prosecutors? The answer is simple, said
Oliva. Federal prosecutors allowed Lopez's brother to gather evidence
outside the walls of prison. The prosecutors then credited Luis Lopez with
providing them with substantial assistance that helped him win his sentence
reduction.

That part of the story was never put on the court record, even when the
judge asked a prosecutor how an imprisoned man such as Lopez could know so
much.

In a letter to the U.S. Attorney General and to Lopez's judge, inmate Ramon
Castellanos wrote that Lopez told him he'd paid $60,000 to another inmate,
a government informant with a pipeline inside the federal bureaucracy, for
confidential information gleaned from federal agents who needed additional
witnesses to buttress their cases.

Castellanos said that Lopez then gave the information to his brother, who
gathered corroboration on the outside, but Castellanos said he has a
government memo that proves at least some of the information Lopez provided
was bogus. The memo in support of yet another sentence reduction states
that another man, Orlando Marrero, provided information about a federal
case that was identical to what Lopez provided.

Oliva said Castellanos' account concerning Lopez is generally accurate, but
he said he does not believe Lopez paid money to anyone for information. "I
do not believe Luis or his family have that kind of money," said Oliva.

Lopez did not respond to a written request for an interview. Neither the
Justice Department nor the United States Attorney for the Southern District
of Florida responded to written questions the newspaper posed about
concerns raised in this series.

In his letters, Castellanos provided documents concerning nine other "jump
on the bus" cases that he said he had firsthand knowledge about. In each of
those cases, inmates gave prosecutors bogus information in exchange for
reductions in their sentences, he said.

Castellanos, who is serving a 30-year sentence for cocaine distribution,
said a sentence reduction is not the reason he has come forward. "Let there
be no mistake about the motivation behind this complaint. I am not seeking
a sentence reduction. I am seeking a balance of justice," he wrote. "I'm
not an angel, only a human being who's made a mistake and is capable of
paying the price.

"However, other similarly suited individuals with cartel connections and
the aid of DEA and U.S. Customs are circumventing and manipulating the U.S.
justice system. The big guys are still dealing their way out of prison
while the little guy serves full-term sentences," Castellanos wrote.

In an interview earlier this year, Castellanos said he has provided
specific instances of this scam to FBI agents from South Florida. He told
them that he would go undercover to expose this process. He said he was
interviewed twice about it in the past year.

The agents haven't contacted him in months, and Castellanos said he doubts
they ever will.

Outside Help

The federal government was also aware of the activities of Pappas and Fierer.

Pappas had been out of jail for only seven months when he established
Conviction Consultants Inc. in the offices of Fierer's downtown Atlanta law
office, and from October 1995 to February 1996, investigators were secretly
recording some of their conversations about "jump on the bus" schemes after
an imprisoned man in Kentucky tipped off the agents.

During its investigation, the government uncovered several instances
involving perjured testimony before indicting Pappas and Fierer.

According to that indictment, Bruce Young, a convict from Nashville, Tenn.,
paid $25,000 to Fierer and Pappas in September 1995. After that, Fierer
wrote a letter to a prosecutor in Tennessee saying he had an informant who
"had some affection for Bruce Young and wanted to help." According to the
indictment, in a recorded conversation a few months later, Pappas told
Young: "You sat in jail and didn't do anything except pay money to buy
freedom."

The government also recorded conversations between Pappas and inmate Peter
Taylor, who was serving a 13-year sentence in Miami for smuggling
marijuana. Pappas told Taylor that a facade had to be created to make
prosecutors believe Taylor knew an informer whom he was going to join in
testifying in a case against another.

According to the indictment, Pappas encouraged Taylor to tell a prosecutor
he and the informer were "lifelong friends or something." In February 1996,
Fierer told Taylor the entire deal would cost him $250,000: $150,000 for
the consulting company, $75,000 for Fierer and $25,000 in expenses.

Rodney Gaddis also sought Pappas' help. Pappas contacted Gaddis, a
convicted bank robber, and told him he had found an informant willing to
provide exculpatory information about Gaddis. He told Gaddis to tell
federal prosecutors that he had known the informant for nine years and that
he looked like "Howdy Doody." Gaddis and the man, however, had never met.

Jumping Lessons

Richard Diaz, a former Miami police officer turned defense lawyer, said he
has seen firsthand how "jump on the bus" scams work.

As an example, he cited the case against Magluta and Falcone, two men who
were charged in the largest cocaine smuggling case to be brought in South
Florida. Diaz, who worked on a related case, said federal agents and
prosecutors were offering deals throughout the South Florida penal system
to anyone who would testify against Magluta and Falcone.

Jurors, however, acquitted the two men because the jurors said they didn't
believe much of the testimony, even though the jury foreman has now been
accused of accepting a $500,000 bribe to fix the case.

Diaz and others said the government offered the same types of inducements
to anyone who could testify against Noriega. "It was common knowledge in
the south Florida jails that anyone who had information to provide
regarding General Noriega would be looked upon very favorably," said Frank
Rubino, one of the cadre of lawyers who represented Noriega in his drug
case, which ended with a conviction and 20-year prison term.

Abundant Sources

To convicts, the information comes from a variety of sources.

With help, some secure evidence, transcripts, indictments and other
materials from cases then memorize that information before approaching a
prosecutor willing to make a deal.

Some get together with informants looking for others to corroborate their
testimony.

Others simply make it up.

In many cases, prosecutors help the convicts along by telling potential
witnesses precisely what they want to hear if the inmate expects to get a
deal, Diaz said. Informers quickly pick up on the basic facts. "If I did
something like that, I could lose my [law license]," Diaz said. "It's like
putting the cheese in front of the rat."

One way to curtail "jump on the bus" schemes would be to administer
polygraph tests to all witnesses. Justice Department rules require
polygraph tests for witnesses who are promised leniency, but defense
attorneys say they are seldom given.

Even though lawyers and inmates have alerted federal prosecutors and agents
about schemes related to "jump on the bus," very little has been done. Diaz
said that if the government acknowledged these abuses of the system, a
large body of cases would end up being reversed.

"It is easy to take the position that they don't know anything about this,"
he said. "It is easy to turn the cheek and deliberately look away from it."

Checked-by: Richard Lake