A longtime Drug Enforcement Administration informant was sentenced Wednesday in Austin, Texas, to time served after pleading guilty to failing to report $3.8 million in DEA payments on his federal tax returns. Andres Zapata, 48, a Colombian-American dual national and professional money launderer, received the sentence as part of a cooperation agreement in a decade-long investigation into agent misconduct, according to two people not authorized to discuss the inquiry who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
The sentencing caps a case that opened a window into a wider DEA corruption scandal. Court records and internal agency documents show Zapata traveled the world with rogue agents in what a former agent described as a “world debauchery tour,” while the DEA paid him a total of more than $4.6 million over nearly two decades as one of its most prolific confidential informants.
Sentence and Restitution
U.S. District Judge David Ezra described Zapata at Wednesday’s hearing as having been “very cooperative” with the government. The judge ordered Zapata to pay $1.2 million in restitution, representing the tax loss to the United States, and denied a request by the AP to unseal sentencing records.
The DEA paid Zapata $3.8 million from 2015 to 2020 for his work as a confidential informant, according to court records. Over a career that internal DEA records show began in 1998, when the agency signed him up as an erstwhile vacuum salesman whose brother-in-law had been charged with drug trafficking, Zapata earned more than $4.6 million from the agency in total.
He pleaded guilty last July to a single count of failing to report those earnings on his tax returns. Informants are required by the DEA to report such income to the Internal Revenue Service but are rarely prosecuted for failing to do so, the AP reported.
Zapata told Judge Ezra he was ready to move forward after spending more than a year in a prison near his hometown of Medellín while awaiting extradition to the United States, which occurred last year from Colombia.
“I’ve learned my lesson,” he said, according to a transcript of the proceeding.
Defense Argument
Zapata’s attorney, Don Bailey, argued at the sentencing hearing that it was unusual for prosecutors to target someone who had risked his life helping U.S. law enforcement combat violent cartels for an offense Bailey said Zapata did not know he was committing.
“You don’t know what you owe. You sign a piece of paper for money. You don’t get receipts,” Bailey said, referring to the absence of standard tax forms typically issued to independent contractors.
The Justice Department’s criminal division, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment. The DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Wider Misconduct Investigation
Zapata worked closely for years with José Irizarry, a former DEA agent now serving a 12-year prison sentence for skimming millions of dollars from money-laundering stings to fund luxury travel, expensive sports cars, and what Irizarry described to investigators as a “world debauchery tour” spanning three continents.
A secret WhatsApp chat that agents used to document their travels details Zapata’s role procuring prostitutes and helping the group, which Irizarry called “Team America,” avoid trouble. In 2018, according to the AP’s reporting, an agent traveling with Zapata in Madrid was briefly detained and accused of sexually assaulting a woman.
Irizarry told investigators that Zapata kicked back some of the reward money he earned as an informant. Irizarry recalled one occasion when Zapata arrived at his apartment in Colombia carrying a bag containing $40,000 in cash — money Irizarry said he used to purchase a Tiffany ring for his wife.
Zapata also allegedly served as a go-between for payments that Irizarry admitted taking from Diego Marin, a one-time DEA informant whom investigators identified as Colombia’s “Contraband Czar.” Marin was arrested in 2024 in Spain as part of a Colombian bribery investigation. The AP obtained a video showing Marin and Zapata at a Madrid restaurant with agents.