Opinion ID: 489490
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Setting the TECS Trap

Text: 2 In the summer of 1980, U.S. Customs officials laid a trap to test their suspicion that Customs law enforcement information was being used for unauthorized purposes. They inserted a fictitious record--of a 1984 Jaguar owned by a Frank Kramer that had been seized by Customs at Niagara Falls--into the Treasury Enforcement Communications Systems (TECS), the Customs Service's law enforcement computer system. They then hired a private investigator from New Hampshire, Ira Cook, to attempt to obtain that information. 3 At Custom's direction, Cook called the Cranston, Rhode Island, police department to ask for a referral to a private investigator. The dispatcher referred him to the Galaxie Agency, which was owned and operated by Lea Ricard, the wife of Cranston police captain Ray Ricard. Cook called Galaxie and told Lea Ricard he had a client with a domestic problem who was trying to find her husband's 1984 Jaguar. Cook represented that his client thought it might be hidden in an apartment complex in Cranston, but her husband, Frank Kramer, said it had been seized by Customs. 4 Lea Ricard agreed to work on the case for $20 an hour. She searched several apartment complexes with no luck and then called Cook back on August 26, 1980 to report her results. During that call she volunteered that she had a friend at Customs in Boston who might be able to find out if the car had been seized. Cook excused himself, hung up, attached a tape recorder to the phone and called back. He taped this and all following conversations with Lea Ricard. On tape, Ricard stated that she was not sure her contact, whom she refused to name, could find out, but that if he could, he would be very expensive.