Opinion ID: 2793225
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Fictional Cover Story

Text: In 2010, federal agents learned that a group of individuals in the Houston, Texas, area was seeking to rob a narcotics stash house. Based on this intelligence, the agents set up a reverse-sting operation wherein agent Richard Zayas would pose undercover in the role of a disgruntled narcotics courier looking for a group to rob a drug stash house. Zayas gained his introduction to the defendants and their associates through an unidentified confidential informant (“CI”). After that introductory meeting, Zayas had four other meetings with the group in his undercover role. These meetings, along with more than twenty related phone calls, were recorded. 1 Agent Zayas’s completely fictional cover story was as follows: He is a drug courier who periodically traffics six to seven kilograms of cocaine for a Cuban drug trafficking organization. He retrieves the cocaine from a stash house but is not provided the location of the house until the day of the scheduled pick up. On that day, he is called and given fifteen minutes to arrive at the house. He always sees two individuals at the house: an armed person who stays with him and a second person who retrieves the cocaine from a back room. Zayas never sees money in the stash house. While Zayas waits for his 1Zayas initiated approximately one-third of the phone calls, generally when he had to return a call. 2 Case: 13-20208 Document: 00513002219 Page: 3 Date Filed: 04/13/2015 No. 13-20208 six or more kilograms of cocaine to be retrieved, he sees twenty-five to thirty additional marked kilogram packages of cocaine in the living room. 2 The two stash house workers give Zayas his allotment of cocaine and the delivery instructions, and Zayas leaves.