In cocaine’s ruthless underworld, Tony Varela carved a deadly niche. He specialized in robbing other dealers, authorities say.
A squat, bullish man with hooded eyes and jet-black hair, he trained pit bulls in the alley behind his Maywood home and, according to authorities, sold up to 120 kilograms of cocaine a month.
When children discovered an alleged drug runner’s rotting corpse in a Maywood lot one summer afternoon in 1990, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration report expressed suspicions about Varela: “It is common knowledge (in the area) that Varela was involved in the death.”
A year later, federal agents arrested Varela for selling 7 kilograms of cocaine in two deals. The 41-year-old Varela was facing 5 to 40 years in prison.
Instead, he became a federal informant.
As the government increasingly relies on such “special agents” to fight the war on drugs, they have come under fire from judges, lawmakers and academicians.
The concerns were brought into focus after federal judges overturned the convictions of 13 Rukns, ruling that prosecutors concealed damaging evidence about their informants and granted them special favors in return for testimony about the gang.
The story of Varela’s government service, detailed in court records and internal agents’ reports, illustrates the problems that can arise when undercover criminals are paid to help police.
Varela did not help officials convict any of his big-ticket dope suppliers. Instead, he fingered a collection of street-level dealers and first-time offenders.
Today, he is free, his property is untouched, and he continues to be rewarded by the government for his cooperation.
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Taken as a whole, Varela’s case raises a central question: Were the benefits that the government provided to its informant equal to those the informant provided society?
Varela’s cousin, Juan Rodriguez, 29, for example, was an unemployed cement layer who had a wife, two children and no arrest record.
He makes no bones about the fact that he brought Varela to a man he knew who had heroin for sale. But Varela acknowledged that Rodriguez was not involved with drug dealing until the two began to talk.
Laid off when the paving company he worked for went bankrupt in the of winter 1991, Rodriguez was “desperate to buy food and pay the rent,” he wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Ann Williams.
Varela guided Rodriguez as he arranged the buy for Varela, drove with him to a Northwest Side garage, then stepped back as an undercover agent arrested Rodriguez.
Today, Rodriguez awaits sentencing to a minimum 10-year term.
“I have ruined my life and hurt my family,” Rodriguez wrote. “No money is worth the pain I have caused.”
After the Rukn trials, federal officials have struggled to restore confidence in their use of informants.
“Nothing like what has happened in the past can happen again,” said U.S. Atty. James Burns on his first day in office this month.
When asked how informants would be handled differently, Burns said they would be kept “at arm’s length.”
Varela wasn’t kept exactly at arm’s length, records show.
Paid more than $18,000 for “information and expenses” in 1991 and 1992 by the Drug Enforcement Administration, he did not pay taxes on that money, according to records.
His Maywood home was not seized, although he allegedly used it as a drug-dealing headquarters, according to records.
A woman, one of two he sometimes referred to as his wife, allegedly took part in at least one drug transaction, according to Varela’s testimony and agents’ reports, but she was not charged.
Varela was not charged in connection with several other crimes, ranging from drug trafficking to paying a drug runner to keep quiet, that authorities became aware of during a 6-month drug surveillance, according to records.
In two of the six trials in which Varela testified for the government, prosecutors did not reveal their extensive files on his criminal background, court records show.
When the testimony of a government witness can determine a person’s guilt, prosecutors are obligated to disclose any information they have that could reflect on the credibility of the witness, including evidence of crimes and deception.
In one case, defense attorneys have asked for a new trial. Prosecutors deny they violated trial rules, and a judge is scheduled to consider arguments in December.
All told, Varela helped agents seize 14 1/2 kilograms of drugs and convict 20 men, federal court records and interviews show. Two others were acquitted. He also played minor roles in a dozen other investigations, as other informants did in his.
Raised on a farm in Durango, Mexico, and almost unschooled, Varela arrived in the western suburbs at age 17 and started working on the railroads.
After working for 18 years as a laborer and welder for the Chicago & North Western Transportation Co., he was forced to resign in 1988 when he allegedly was caught with stolen company credit cards.
A few months after his resignation, Varela was arrested while attempting to steal expensive tools from a railroad garage. He was sentenced to a year’s probation.
Government agents first encountered him in autumn 1990 while investigating a Melrose Park organized-crime crew that was active in counterfeiting, narcotics and municipal corruption. Varela allegedly helped the crew by trading pound quantities of marijuana for special inks that would be used to print fake dollar bills, agents’ reports state.
In subsequent months, Varela was taped planning to rob a “mule,” a drug carrier, of a carload of cocaine, according to authorities.
Federal officials would not comment on the deal they struck with Varela because of pending trial matters. Privately, officials described their offer of leniency as one of dozens of bargains made by prosecutors and agents who cannot be sure how the dealer’s information will pan out in court.
Some of those Varela helped snare had criminal records, such as admitted Vice Lords gang member Victor Bardney or Eric “Big Boy” Jackson, who had been convicted of drug dealing in Du Page County and Florida.
Others were arrested for the first time.
Ricardo Ramirez, who met Varela in the mid-1980s while working on a railroad crew, led his friend to a source who had 13 ounces of heroin for sale. Convicted in that deal, Ramirez awaits sentencing to a minimum 10-year term.
“I accept that I made a mistake,” Ramirez wrote in a letter to then-U.S. District Judge Ilana Rovner, but the mistake was “one which I was induced to make by a person who hasn’t had the courage or the sense of regret to pay for his crime, besides which he sees every person as a check that the government gives him for turning in innocent people.”
Jesus Rosales, 40, a father with no arrest record, was sentenced to 5 years for putting Varela in touch with a man who tried to buy 2 kilos of cocaine.
“I was doing Varela a favor because Varela bought me a meal,” Rosales testified.
Varela testified that Rodriguez had years before used small amounts of cocaine at bars, but said he was not involved with drug dealing and expressed no interest in doing so.
Then came a conversation in which Rodriguez approached him to solicit a deal, Varela testified.
Rodriguez argued that Varela initiated the idea.
“He would always talk about drug dealing and about how I could make a lot of money,” Rodriguez wrote in his letter to Williams. “I still told him I wasn’t interested, and I even had my family tell him I wasn’t home when he came by.
“Finally, I did agree to help Varela buy some heroin from some people I knew. I know this was wrong and Varela didn’t force me to do it, but I thought I could make some money and solve my family’s problems. I am the one to blame.”
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When Varela took the witness stand in that trial, Rodriguez’s attorney, Daniel Alexander, asked him about the kind of things he had been willing to do for money.
“You’ve been willing to lie for money?” Alexander asked.
“That’s right,” Varela said.
“And you’ve been willing to steal for money?”
“That’s right.”
“And you’ve been willing to perjure yourself for money?”
“That’s right.”
“Another thing you’ve been willing to do for money is to deal large amounts of drugs, right?”
“That’s right.”
“. . . So you were involved in passing counterfeit money, right?
“. . . Yes.”
“Now, you’ve also been willing to cheat on your taxes for money, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“. . . And the government hasn’t prosecuted you for that, have they?”
“No sir.”
“They just told you nicely that you ought to (report your income), right?”
“That’s right.”
Officials said Varela is working as a free-lance “bounty hunter” for the DEA. Under federal guidelines, he can be paid a percentage of any assets seized because of information he provides, agency officials said.
Varela could not be reached for comment. His current address, one listed in divorce papers, is a parking lot at 1825 N. Ashland Ave., Chicago.