Andrew Chambers: DEA Informant, Perjury, and Reactivation

Andrew Chambers was a paid DEA informant whose 16-year undercover career produced 445 arrests and the seizure of roughly 1.5 tons of cocaine, and whose exposure in 2000 as a serial perjurer became one of the most damaging informant scandals in federal law enforcement history. He earned an estimated $4 million from federal agencies while lying under oath about his criminal record, his education, and his background in courtrooms across the country. When the truth came out, prosecutions collapsed, convictions were challenged, and the DEA was forced to admit it had built cases on a witness it knew, or should have known, could not be trusted.

A 16-Year Undercover Career

Chambers, a high school dropout and former Marine from the St. Louis area, started working with the DEA around 1984 after failing to qualify as an agent himself. Over the next decade and a half he worked in at least 31 cities, posing at various times as a gang member, a wealthy dealer driving a Mercedes, and a Latino man named “Rico.”¹

The DEA credited him with involvement in more than 300 cases, 445 arrests, seizures of about 1.5 tons of cocaine, and the recovery of $6 million in assets.² He also worked for the FBI, Customs, postal inspectors, and the Secret Service. Court records described him as the highest-paid snitch in DEA history.

The pay reflected the volume. The DEA alone paid him about $2.2 million, and his total federal compensation reached an estimated $4 million.¹ In Los Angeles alone he collected $721,388. His payments were tied, at least indirectly, to arrests and seizures, giving him a financial reason to keep cases moving.

The Lies Under Oath

On the witness stand, Chambers presented himself as an upstanding citizen with a clean record. He had actually been arrested at least six times, with convictions including soliciting sex from an undercover officer in Colorado and impersonating a DEA agent, along with arrests for forgery, theft, and domestic assault.¹ None of it was disclosed to defense attorneys, and in many cases not to prosecutors either.

The DEA’s own internal review found he had lied under oath in at least 16 of 25 sworn depositions and trials. He lied about his arrests, falsely claimed to have attended Iowa Wesleyan College, and lied about his failure to file tax returns.³ Federal public defender H. Dean Steward, who spent years digging into his record, said Chambers “has lied under oath virtually every time he has been put on the witness stand.”¹

In a June 1999 deposition in a Florida drug case, Chambers testified that his only brush with the law was a single solicitation arrest, directly contradicting a documented record of at least six arrests.¹ Defense lawyers also accused him of routinely failing to record his initial contacts with suspects, which made it impossible to test whether he had entrapped anyone.²

How the DEA Protected Him

The Chambers story is not just one informant’s dishonesty. Federal agents actively shielded him. On at least three occasions, DEA agents paid his bail, got his bail reduced, or persuaded prosecutors and judges to drop charges against him.³ In 1985, a DEA agent got a Kentucky judge to recall arrest warrants against him. In 1998, another agent posted bail after Chambers was arrested in Dallas for soliciting a prostitute.¹

The agency acknowledged “lax oversight” of its most productive informant and admitted hiding his misconduct from defense attorneys and some prosecutors.³ When a FOIA request for his records was filed, the DEA tried to withhold them. A federal court in the District of Columbia ordered release after finding “compelling evidence suggesting massive government misconduct.”²

Los Angeles defense attorney John P. Martin said DEA agents “were addicted” to using Chambers and “were willing to overlook his perjury — if not assist him in continuing to perjure himself.”³

Exposure and Deactivation

The unraveling started in April 1998, when Steward filed a formal complaint with the DEA’s Office of Professional Responsibility.¹ In July 1999, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the DEA to release its files on Chambers, citing “extensive government misconduct.” That same year, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Wolfe told the Ninth Circuit that Chambers was “undefendable” and characterized the DEA’s failure to confront his perjury as “carelessness, recklessness and probably deliberate.”²

On January 16, 2000, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published an investigation headlined “Top U.S. drug snitch is a legend and a liar.” On February 2, 2000, the DEA formally deactivated Chambers, and Attorney General Janet Reno suspended his use as an operative.²

The DEA’s Office of Inspections later produced a 157-page management review, released in May 2001. It confirmed the scope of the lies but blamed “communication failures within the agency” for letting his perjuries “fall through the cracks,” and concluded that his falsehoods were “not germane to guilt or innocence of defendants.”² No DEA employee faced public discipline. Chambers himself was never charged with perjury or tax evasion. DEA spokesman Michael Chapman said at the time, “We realize a lot of mistakes were made. This was not one of our finer moments.”³

What Happened to the Cases

Prosecutors in Miami and South Carolina dismissed indictments outright because his credibility was gone.² Charges against at least 12 suspected drug dealers were dismissed, and one convicted dealer in California was freed without a new trial.³ The DEA re-examined 295 cases involving Chambers.⁴

In a federal murder-for-hire case in Los Angeles, defense attorneys for Edward Stanley Jr. and Daniel Ray Bennett argued that the wiretap central to the prosecution had been obtained using information from Chambers, and would never have been approved if his criminal background had been properly disclosed.¹

The Quiet Reactivation

The deactivation did not stick. Federal court records show Chambers was reactivated around 2008, while Michele Leonhart was serving as the DEA’s deputy director.² Leonhart had worked with Chambers as a drug investigator in St. Louis in the 1980s and later ran the DEA’s Los Angeles office. In 2000 she described him as “very credible, an outstanding testifier” and “one in a million,” and said his departure from undercover work would be “a sad day for the DEA.” The DEA’s own management review listed her as one of his handlers.

Federal authorities refused to disclose who authorized the reactivation or why. Steward said the link was direct: “It is obvious who revived Chambers’ undercover career: Michele Leonhart, head of the DEA. She was his handling agent.” Diane Humetewa, the U.S. Attorney for Arizona in 2008, said she had no recollection of Chambers. Leonhart was confirmed as DEA Administrator in 2010 and served until 2015.

By around 2010 Chambers was working undercover in Phoenix on a sting targeting Luis Alberto Hernandez-Flores, who was indicted in March 2012 on narcotics possession and conspiracy charges. When defense attorney Cameron Morgan realized the government’s key informant was the same Andrew Chambers, he moved in May 2013 to dismiss for “outrageous government conduct.” On June 4, 2013, federal prosecutors filed their own motion to dismiss the charges against Hernandez-Flores and co-defendant Saul Sandoval.⁵ Morgan forwarded information about the reactivation to the Senate and House justice committees.

What Changed, and What Didn’t

After the 2000 deactivation, the DEA promised centralized informant files that would include criminal records, prior work summaries, and prosecutors’ assessments of truthfulness. It also adopted a rule barring the use of any informant who had lied on the stand absent a special exemption.¹ The U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles later piloted an informant-tracking system as a potential template for federal prosecutors nationwide.⁶

The problems continued anyway. Justice Department Office of Inspector General audits in 2015 and 2016 found that the DEA had paid an estimated $9.4 million to more than 800 previously deactivated sources between fiscal years 2011 and 2015. In one case echoing the Chambers pattern, a source deactivated for false testimony was reactivated by 13 field offices and paid $469,158, including more than $61,000 after being deactivated a second time for making false statements.⁷ In November 2016 congressional testimony, DEA officials said they had established an Office of Compliance, revised inspection processes, and were transitioning oversight of “limited use” informant sources under Department of Justice guidelines, and had agreed to implement all OIG and GAO recommendations.⁸

1
Los Angeles Times. A Career Informant Exposed as a Liar
2
USA Today. DEA Reactivates Controversial Informant
3
Deseret News. Lying Informant May Have Wrecked DEA Cases
4
New York Times. Drug Agency Looks Again at an Informer’s Career
5
USA Today. Case of Flawed Federal Informer Falls Apart
6
Los Angeles Times. New System Tracks Informants
7
DOJ Office of the Inspector General. DOJ OIG Releases Report on DEA’s Confidential Source Program
8
GovInfo. Hearing on DEA Confidential Source Program