Agent rented room at his Hialeah home to suspect in pill ring, tipped him off, feds say

It’s rare, but federal agents sometimes get charged in crimes. Rarer still, an agent gets busted while investigating — and collaborating with — criminals.

But the case of Al Crespo, a suspended Health and Human Services’ agent, is even more unusual. Crespo actually rented an efficiency behind his own Hialeah home to the prime suspect in an illegal pain pill ring and is accused of tipping him off about an ongoing probe, according to newly filed records in Miami federal court.

Crespo, who has worked for nearly 30 years in a number of South Florida law enforcement positions, faces charges of peddling painkillers and protecting the main target of a federal drug-trafficking investigation.

That suspect, Jorge Diaz Gutierrez, and a couple, Yandre Trujillo Hernandez and Anais Lorenzo, have already pleaded guilty earlier this month to conspiring to sell thousands of kilos of Oxycodone pills that were prescribed by a Hialeah doctor previously convicted of Medicare fraud.

Diaz, a patient recruiter for the doctor, also pleaded guilty to obstructing justice and now faces up to seven years in prison — more than Trujillo and Lorenzo, who are cooperating with federal prosecutors and may testify against Crespo at his upcoming trial in Miami federal court. It was set for Monday but has been pushed back to December because of trial conflicts in a judge’s schedule.

Crespo’s defense attorneys claim that the 47-year-old veteran agent has done nothing wrong and is looking forward to clearing his name at trial on charges of conspiring to distribute Oxycodone, witness tampering and obstruction of justice.

The lawyers, Jose Quinon and Marc Seitles, told the Miami Herald that prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI investigators “reverse-engineered the prosecution” of their client.

“There is not a scintilla of evidence that he was involved with any Oxycodone distribution,” Quinon said. “There is no evidence that Al obstructed justice or prevented an investigation” from going forward.

“This guy bleeds blue,” Seitles said, noting that Crespo has worked as a Health and Human Services investigator since 2010, and before that had stints with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Hialeah Police Department and Air Force military police. “There’s nothing in his background to suggest the absurdity of these allegations.”

But prosecutors, in a factual statement filed with Diaz’s plea agreement, allege that the longtime HHS special agent actively helped protect Diaz’s painkiller-distribution ring by providing him with inside information about the Oxycodone probe — evidence captured on undercover cellphone recordings.

“[Special agent] Crespo repeatedly provided [Diaz] with detailed instructions to destroy and tamper with evidence, obstruct the investigation, and provide materially false information to investigating agents when the defendant was interviewed,” according to Diaz’s factual statement filed with his plea deal, which were signed by him, his assistant public defender and a federal prosecutor last week.

“[Special agent] Crespo and [Diaz] also discussed how to conceal their living arrangement from investigating agents and discussed beating, stabbing and killing possible cooperating witnesses, including co-defendant Lorenzo, if necessary,” the statement filed in federal court says.

According to an FBI criminal complaint, the corruption investigation was launched in March of 2019. Crespo and Diaz were recorded on wiretaps talking about protecting each other, issuing Santeria religious curses and threatening to kill snitches in the underlying Oxycodone investigation. Both men were arrested back in July 2020, but their indictment was delayed by the federal grand jury until early 2021 because it was unable to convene during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Crespo is accused of using his position in the HHS strike force to tip off Diaz about an investigation into a Hialeah doctor, Rodolfo Gonzalez-Garcia, according to federal prosecutors Sean McLaughlin and Christopher Clark.

Gonzalez-Garcia pleaded guilty to Medicare fraud and other charges in 2019 for unlawfully prescribing and dispensing Oxycodone pills. Three other defendants also pleaded guilty to similar offenses. Diaz worked as a narcotics distributor for the doctor’s clinic, the FBI complaint says, while also receiving kickbacks for the patient referrals. Co-defendants Trujillo and Lorenzo admitted in their plea deals and statements to playing similar roles.

Crespo regularly alerted Diaz about the status of the strike force’s investigation into the alleged Oxycodone ring, according to the FBI complaint. Diaz told a confidential federal source that he had been recruiting patients and buying and selling Oxycodone prescriptions for years — and that Crespo was well aware of his criminal activities, the complaint says.

According to Diaz’s statement filed with his plea agreement, Crespo called him in June 2020 to meet at their Hialeah home because the agent said he “needed to warn” him in person about the Health and Human Services’ investigation into the alleged painkiller-distribution ring.

Cellphone recordings also indicate that Crespo met Diaz at the Hialeah home so he could show him an internal HHS email listing the names of patients prescribed painkillers by Dr. Gonzalez who were going to be interviewed as part of the expanding probe.

Phone intercepts “confirmed that [Diaz] met with SA Crespo and that SA Crespo disclosed the contents of the email with intended interview targets to [Diaz],” according to the statement filed with his plea agreement.