Florida
Longtime DEA informant charged in alleged scheme to extort high-level cocaine traffickers
MIAMI (AP) — A drug informant who helped the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration build some of its biggest cases has been arrested and charged with scheming to extort major cocaine traffickers facing extradition from Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
Jorge Hernández, 57, was charged in a criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday with one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud. He remains in custody after being arrested and making his initial court appearance Wednesday in federal court in Fort Lauderdale.
Court papers allege that Hernández operated a scheme starting in 2020 in which he pretended to be a paralegal who, for the right price, could obtain lighter sentences for drug kingpins, according to 17-page FBI affidavit.
The FBI alleged that Hernández demanded payments of $1 million from six suspected drug traffickers who ended up surrendering or being extradited to the U.S.
In exchange for the payments — which came in the form of cash, jewelry, properties and vehicles in Colombia — Hernández guaranteed short prison sentences that would be served “in an apartment similar to being on house arrest,” the court papers said.
But Hernández never delivered on his promises, nor did he have authority to offer such leniency. As the traffickers who thought they were buying influence grew upset, he would deny responsibility and shift blame to the traffickers’ attorneys, the FBI said.
Nestor Menendez, an attorney who represented Hernández at his initial appearance, declined to comment.
In two decades as a confidential informant, Hernández had been one of federal law enforcement’s most prolific case-makers, providing the types of tips and information that led to prosecutions of high seas drug smugglers, a former University of Miami money laundering expert and a close ally of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Better known in law enforcement circles by his Spanish nickname Boliche — bowling ball — the beefy, bald-headed Colombian was also the star witness in the 2023 bribery trial of two former DEA supervisors convicted for leaking information on ongoing drug investigations.
He got his start as an informant in 2000 shortly after he was arrested in Venezuela, where he had fled to escape drug dealers seeking to kill him, according to a 2023 investigation by The Associated Press.
After bribing officials to secure his release, he approached the DEA, admitting to killing three people during his days as a drug runner near his home along Colombia’s Caribbean coast. He then began helping the DEA build some of its biggest cases.
Agents grew so reliant on Hernández’s network of criminal associates across the Western hemisphere that they set him up with a phone and desk at a federal anti-narcotics task force, the AP found.
The DEA terminated his cooperation agreement in 2008, court records show, after authorities discovered he had threatened to expose informants as snitches unless they paid him to keep quiet.
But he kept close to some of his former DEA handlers and eventually returned to Miami. In 2016, he met DEA agent John Costanzo, who was supervising agents investigating Colombian businessman Alex Saab, a suspected bag man for Venezuela’s Maduro. In 2023, Hernández testified against Costanzo and another former DEA agent convicted of taking bribes from narco defense attorneys.
Hernández turned the tables on the DEA around the same time he was charged alongside University of Miami professor Bruce Bagley for helping move $3 million on behalf of Saab, who prosecutors said was secretly negotiating a deal to betray Maduro.
Those charges remain under seal. In the complaint unsealed Wednesday, the FBI that Hernández is serving a term of probation on a federal conviction for conspiracy to commit money laundering that is set to end in May 2027.
Washington
Supreme Court revives lawsuits against Palestinian authorities from U.S. victims of terrorism attacks
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday revived long-running lawsuits against Palestinian authorities from Americans who were killed or wounded in terrorism attacks in the Middle East.
The justices upheld a 2019 law enacted by Congress specifically to allow the victims’ lawsuits to go forward against the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority.
The attacks occurred in the early 2000s, killing 33 people and wounding hundreds more, and in 2018, when a U.S.-born settler was stabbed to death by a Palestinian assailant outside a mall in the West Bank.
The victims and their families assert that Palestinian agents either were involved in the attacks or incited them.
The Palestinians have consistently argued that the cases shouldn’t be allowed in American courts.
The federal appeals court in New York has repeatedly ruled in favor of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, despite Congress’ efforts to allow the victims’ lawsuits to be heard.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals first ruled in 2016 against the victims of the attacks from 20 years ago, tossing out a $654 million jury verdict in their favor. In that earlier ruling, the appeals court held U.S. courts can’t consider lawsuits against foreign-based groups over random attacks that were not aimed at the United States.
The victims had sued under the Anti-Terrorism Act, signed into law in 1992. The law was passed to open U.S. courts to victims of international terrorism, spurred by the killing of American Leon Klinghoffer during a 1985 terrorist attack aboard the Achille Lauro cruise ship.
The jury found the PLO and the Palestinian Authority liable for six attacks and awarded $218 million in damages. The award was automatically tripled under the law.
After the Supreme Court rejected the victims’ appeal in 2018, Congress again amended the law to make clear it did not want to close the courthouse door to the victims.
New Mexico
2 men get life in shooting death of 11-year-old boy outside stadium
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Two men were sentenced Wednesday to lifelong terms in prison in the shooting death of an 11-year-old boy outside an Albuquerque baseball stadium in 2023 that prompted the New Mexico governor to issue a controversial gun ban, the district attorney’s office in Albuquerque said.
Investigators say a truck carrying a mother and three young children was mistaken for another vehicle in the shooting as vehicles were leaving the stadium. Gunfire killed 11-year-old Froylan Villegas and paralyzed cousin Tatiana Villegas, while Froylan’s mother and baby brother were unharmed.
A jury in February convicted Jose Romero and Nathen Garley, both in their early 20s, of first-degree murder, tampering with evidence, shooting at or from a vehicle and other charges in the death of Villegas.
The men were sentenced to life in prison plus 46 years, ensuring they will stay under Corrections Department custody permanently, prosecutors said.
In the aftermath of the shooting and others that killed children, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham declared a public health emergency over gun violence, temporarily suspending the right to carry guns in some parks and playgrounds in the greater Albuquerque area. The decision touched off protests and legal challenges by advocates for gun rights.
District Attorney Sam Bregman, a Democratic candidate for governor in 2026, said in a statement that the shootings “shook our entire community” and praised his staff for pursuing accountability.
Washington
Supreme court widens court options for vaping companies pushing back against FDA rules
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court sided with e-cigarette companies on Friday in a ruling making it easier to sue over Food and Drug Administration decisions blocking their products from the multibillion-dollar vaping market.
The 7-2 opinion comes as companies push back against a yearslong federal regulatory crackdown on electronic cigarettes. It’s expected to give the companies more control over which judges hear lawsuits filed against the agency.
The justices went the other way on vaping in an April decision, siding with the FDA in a ruling upholding a sweeping block on most sweet-flavored vapes instituted after a spike in youth vaping.
The current case was filed by R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co., which had sold a line of popular berry and menthol-flavored vaping products before the agency started regulating the market under the Tobacco Control Act in 2016.
The agency refused to authorize the company’s Vuse Alto products, an order that “sounded the death knell for a significant portion of the e-cigarette market,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion.
The company is based in North Carolina and typically would have been limited to challenging the FDA in a court there or in the agency’s home base of Washington. Instead, it joined forces with Texas businesses that sell the products and sued there. The conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the lawsuit to go forward, finding that anyone whose business is hurt by the FDA decision can sue.
The agency appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that R.J. Reynolds was trying to find a court friendly to its arguments, a practice often called “judge shopping.”
The justices, though, found that the law does allow other businesses affected by the FDA decisions, like e-cigarette sellers, to sue in their home states.
In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said she would have sided with the agency and limited where the cases can be filed.
The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids called the majority decision disappointing, saying it would allow manufacturers to “judge shop,” though it said the companies will still have to contend with the Supreme Court’s April decision.
Attorney Ryan Watson, who represented R.J. Reynolds, said that the court recognized that agency decisions can have devastating downstream effects on retailers and other businesses, and the decision “ensures that the courthouse doors are not closed” to them.
Longtime DEA informant charged in alleged scheme to extort high-level cocaine traffickers
MIAMI (AP) — A drug informant who helped the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration build some of its biggest cases has been arrested and charged with scheming to extort major cocaine traffickers facing extradition from Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
Jorge Hernández, 57, was charged in a criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday with one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud. He remains in custody after being arrested and making his initial court appearance Wednesday in federal court in Fort Lauderdale.
Court papers allege that Hernández operated a scheme starting in 2020 in which he pretended to be a paralegal who, for the right price, could obtain lighter sentences for drug kingpins, according to 17-page FBI affidavit.
The FBI alleged that Hernández demanded payments of $1 million from six suspected drug traffickers who ended up surrendering or being extradited to the U.S.
In exchange for the payments — which came in the form of cash, jewelry, properties and vehicles in Colombia — Hernández guaranteed short prison sentences that would be served “in an apartment similar to being on house arrest,” the court papers said.
But Hernández never delivered on his promises, nor did he have authority to offer such leniency. As the traffickers who thought they were buying influence grew upset, he would deny responsibility and shift blame to the traffickers’ attorneys, the FBI said.
Nestor Menendez, an attorney who represented Hernández at his initial appearance, declined to comment.
In two decades as a confidential informant, Hernández had been one of federal law enforcement’s most prolific case-makers, providing the types of tips and information that led to prosecutions of high seas drug smugglers, a former University of Miami money laundering expert and a close ally of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Better known in law enforcement circles by his Spanish nickname Boliche — bowling ball — the beefy, bald-headed Colombian was also the star witness in the 2023 bribery trial of two former DEA supervisors convicted for leaking information on ongoing drug investigations.
He got his start as an informant in 2000 shortly after he was arrested in Venezuela, where he had fled to escape drug dealers seeking to kill him, according to a 2023 investigation by The Associated Press.
After bribing officials to secure his release, he approached the DEA, admitting to killing three people during his days as a drug runner near his home along Colombia’s Caribbean coast. He then began helping the DEA build some of its biggest cases.
Agents grew so reliant on Hernández’s network of criminal associates across the Western hemisphere that they set him up with a phone and desk at a federal anti-narcotics task force, the AP found.
The DEA terminated his cooperation agreement in 2008, court records show, after authorities discovered he had threatened to expose informants as snitches unless they paid him to keep quiet.
But he kept close to some of his former DEA handlers and eventually returned to Miami. In 2016, he met DEA agent John Costanzo, who was supervising agents investigating Colombian businessman Alex Saab, a suspected bag man for Venezuela’s Maduro. In 2023, Hernández testified against Costanzo and another former DEA agent convicted of taking bribes from narco defense attorneys.
Hernández turned the tables on the DEA around the same time he was charged alongside University of Miami professor Bruce Bagley for helping move $3 million on behalf of Saab, who prosecutors said was secretly negotiating a deal to betray Maduro.
Those charges remain under seal. In the complaint unsealed Wednesday, the FBI that Hernández is serving a term of probation on a federal conviction for conspiracy to commit money laundering that is set to end in May 2027.
Washington
Supreme Court revives lawsuits against Palestinian authorities from U.S. victims of terrorism attacks
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday revived long-running lawsuits against Palestinian authorities from Americans who were killed or wounded in terrorism attacks in the Middle East.
The justices upheld a 2019 law enacted by Congress specifically to allow the victims’ lawsuits to go forward against the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority.
The attacks occurred in the early 2000s, killing 33 people and wounding hundreds more, and in 2018, when a U.S.-born settler was stabbed to death by a Palestinian assailant outside a mall in the West Bank.
The victims and their families assert that Palestinian agents either were involved in the attacks or incited them.
The Palestinians have consistently argued that the cases shouldn’t be allowed in American courts.
The federal appeals court in New York has repeatedly ruled in favor of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, despite Congress’ efforts to allow the victims’ lawsuits to be heard.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals first ruled in 2016 against the victims of the attacks from 20 years ago, tossing out a $654 million jury verdict in their favor. In that earlier ruling, the appeals court held U.S. courts can’t consider lawsuits against foreign-based groups over random attacks that were not aimed at the United States.
The victims had sued under the Anti-Terrorism Act, signed into law in 1992. The law was passed to open U.S. courts to victims of international terrorism, spurred by the killing of American Leon Klinghoffer during a 1985 terrorist attack aboard the Achille Lauro cruise ship.
The jury found the PLO and the Palestinian Authority liable for six attacks and awarded $218 million in damages. The award was automatically tripled under the law.
After the Supreme Court rejected the victims’ appeal in 2018, Congress again amended the law to make clear it did not want to close the courthouse door to the victims.
New Mexico
2 men get life in shooting death of 11-year-old boy outside stadium
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Two men were sentenced Wednesday to lifelong terms in prison in the shooting death of an 11-year-old boy outside an Albuquerque baseball stadium in 2023 that prompted the New Mexico governor to issue a controversial gun ban, the district attorney’s office in Albuquerque said.
Investigators say a truck carrying a mother and three young children was mistaken for another vehicle in the shooting as vehicles were leaving the stadium. Gunfire killed 11-year-old Froylan Villegas and paralyzed cousin Tatiana Villegas, while Froylan’s mother and baby brother were unharmed.
A jury in February convicted Jose Romero and Nathen Garley, both in their early 20s, of first-degree murder, tampering with evidence, shooting at or from a vehicle and other charges in the death of Villegas.
The men were sentenced to life in prison plus 46 years, ensuring they will stay under Corrections Department custody permanently, prosecutors said.
In the aftermath of the shooting and others that killed children, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham declared a public health emergency over gun violence, temporarily suspending the right to carry guns in some parks and playgrounds in the greater Albuquerque area. The decision touched off protests and legal challenges by advocates for gun rights.
District Attorney Sam Bregman, a Democratic candidate for governor in 2026, said in a statement that the shootings “shook our entire community” and praised his staff for pursuing accountability.
Washington
Supreme court widens court options for vaping companies pushing back against FDA rules
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court sided with e-cigarette companies on Friday in a ruling making it easier to sue over Food and Drug Administration decisions blocking their products from the multibillion-dollar vaping market.
The 7-2 opinion comes as companies push back against a yearslong federal regulatory crackdown on electronic cigarettes. It’s expected to give the companies more control over which judges hear lawsuits filed against the agency.
The justices went the other way on vaping in an April decision, siding with the FDA in a ruling upholding a sweeping block on most sweet-flavored vapes instituted after a spike in youth vaping.
The current case was filed by R.J. Reynolds Vapor Co., which had sold a line of popular berry and menthol-flavored vaping products before the agency started regulating the market under the Tobacco Control Act in 2016.
The agency refused to authorize the company’s Vuse Alto products, an order that “sounded the death knell for a significant portion of the e-cigarette market,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion.
The company is based in North Carolina and typically would have been limited to challenging the FDA in a court there or in the agency’s home base of Washington. Instead, it joined forces with Texas businesses that sell the products and sued there. The conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the lawsuit to go forward, finding that anyone whose business is hurt by the FDA decision can sue.
The agency appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that R.J. Reynolds was trying to find a court friendly to its arguments, a practice often called “judge shopping.”
The justices, though, found that the law does allow other businesses affected by the FDA decisions, like e-cigarette sellers, to sue in their home states.
In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said she would have sided with the agency and limited where the cases can be filed.
The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids called the majority decision disappointing, saying it would allow manufacturers to “judge shop,” though it said the companies will still have to contend with the Supreme Court’s April decision.
Attorney Ryan Watson, who represented R.J. Reynolds, said that the court recognized that agency decisions can have devastating downstream effects on retailers and other businesses, and the decision “ensures that the courthouse doors are not closed” to them.
