PRISON COOK ARRESTED IN DRUG INQUIRY

FORT WORTH -- For two years, Benicio Hoyos Jr., a federal prison cook with
three children and a fourth on the way, made sure inmates got their fill.

And then their fix, investigators said.

In addition to earning $19.17 an hour as a prison cook, Hoyos was running a
drug delivery service for inmates at the Federal Medical Center, smuggling
liquor, marijuana, cocaine and heroine, investigators say.

Finally, a yearlong investigation culminated Wednesday with the arrest of
Hoyos, 26, of River Oaks.

According to an affidavit for his arrest, officials at the prison began to
take notice of a problem in 1996, when a "high number" of inmates tested
positive for drugs.

Investigations like the one against Hoyos remind federal officials that
anyone can be lured by quick cash, said Michael Bromwich, the inspector
general of the Department of Justice.

"That can really tempt and seduce them," said Bromwich, whose office heads
internal affairs investigations against federal employees.

Although it is uncommon for prison employees to be implicated in drug
smuggling cases, Bromwich said, recent arrests at prisons in Atlanta and
New York indicate the problem is growing right along with the prison
population.

Bromwich said he does not know the extent of drug problems at the prison,
but he said any corruption among federal employees is a "gross breach of
the public trust."

Hoyos' wife, Dina, who is 8 months pregnant, called her husband loving and
a family man. Benicio Hoyos' attorneys, Bill and Jim Lane, could not be
reached to comment.

In a brief hearing Thursday in a nearly empty federal courtroom, Hoyos sat
at the defense table in his khaki jail pants and black T-shirt, listening
quietly as Assistant U.S. Attorney Terri Moore told a federal magistrate
that Hoyos had been smuggling drugs into the prison since 1995.

If convicted, Hoyos faces up to 20 years in prison. He is scheduled to
appear Tuesday at a preliminary hearing. Meanwhile, he is on paid
administrative leave.

"I think that this kind of thing has gone on in prisons for a long time,
but it's been kind of hush- hush," Moore said. "People just don't want to
believe that an incarcerated inmate could be sitting in the penitentiary
getting stoned."

Joseph Woodring, associate warden of programs at the Fort Worth prison,
said inmates who test positive for drugs risk losing privileges that
include phone use and visitation.

"We take this kind of stuff real serious," Woodring said.

Federal officials won't reveal the number of inmates who have tested
positive for drugs at the prison, on Horton Road just north of the Tarrant
County Junior College South Campus.

And they also won't say whether some inmates continue to test positive,
even after Hoyos' arrest. That information, officials said, is part of an
ongoing investigation.

Todd Craig, spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons in Washington, said 10
percent of the country's 114,000 federal prison inmates are tested randomly
for drugs each month.

"The positive rate is quite low, somewhere around 1.4 percent of the
population," Craig said.

The prison houses 1,400 inmates, most of whom are awaiting trial or serving
their sentences. A smaller number of inmates are housed in the facility's
medical unit.

Bromwich said he cannot recall his staff investigating any similar
incidents at the federal prison.

"There could be contraband problems there and we just don't know about it,"
Bromwich said.

The arrest affidavit alleges that Hoyos operated a scheme in which inmates'
relatives would send two $600 money orders to a Fort Worth couple.

The couple would keep $100 and buy $500 worth of drugs, the affidavit
states. Hoyos would pick up the drugs and keep the other $600 money order
as payoff money, the affidavit states.

The couple, who aren't being identified because they are witnesses in the
case, will not be charged in exchange for their cooperation, officials
said.

Hoyos would then take the drugs to the prison, where federal employees are
not regularly searched as they enter, officials said.

Hoyos would then leave the drugs, wrapped in black duct tape, at a drop
site near the kitchen for inmates to pick up, the affidavit states.

It's rare for prison employees to be arrested for providing contraband to
inmates, federal officials said. Visitors are much more likely to sneak
drugs to inmates, so that's where federal officials have concentrated most
of their security efforts, Craig said.

Cameras are in place, as are guards, Craig said, and every precaution is
taken to ensure that inmates don't leave a visit with a drug stash."Inmates
are strip-searched when they go into and when they go out" of the visiting
room, Craig said.

Two of the nation's 92 federal facilities -- one in Illinois and the other
in Colorado -- allow only noncontact visits, in which partitions separate
the inmate from the visitor. Those facilities have reported that no inmates
are testing positive for drugs, Craig said.

Although visitors can be blamed for the bulk of the problem, Bromwich said,
prison employees have contributed to drug use in the nation's 92 federal
prisons.

In New York City, 11 federal prison guards working at the Metropolitan
Detention Center in Brooklyn were arrested in May on bribery charges
stemming from allegations that they accepted bribes to smuggle contraband,
including drugs, to inmates.

Since then, one guard has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, three pleaded
guilty to felony bribery charges and one was acquitted at trial. The rest
of the cases are pending, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Seth Marvin of New
York's Eastern District office in Brooklyn.

In Atlanta, a guard at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary was sentenced to
serve six months in a halfway house and ordered to complete 100 hours of
community service after he smuggled marijuana to an inmate.