Prominent Miami defense lawyer charged in DEA bribery scheme

[February 14, 2025]  By JOSHUA GOODMAN and JIM MUSTIAN

NEW YORK (AP) — Federal prosecutors have charged a prominent Miami defense attorney with orchestrating a bribery conspiracy involving two former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration supervisors who leaked confidential information about drug investigations.

Prosecutors have said that attorney David Macey lavished the agents with cash and gifts, including Yankees-Red Sox baseball tickets, in exchange for sensitive information about the timing of federal indictments and other leads that authorities said put cases and investigators at risk.

The charges remained under seal Thursday, defense attorney David Patton told The Associated Press, adding Macey is expected to appear in federal court Friday. The precise charges against Macey were not immediately known.

“David is a devoted father and husband and a highly respected attorney with an impeccable record as a member of the bar for nearly 30 years. He did not bribe anyone," Patton wrote in an email. "The government’s allegations are false, and we are confident that the evidence will prove his innocence at trial.”

The prosecution has cast an unflattering light on Miami's “white powder bar,” a fiercely competitive circle of high-priced defense lawyers jockeying to sign up suspected narcotraffickers, negotiate surrender deals and convert them into government cooperators.

The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan did not respond to requests for comment. Federal prosecutors have previously called Macey a “crooked attorney” who “paid handsomely for DEA secrets.”

The indictment comes a year after prosecutors filed court papers saying Macey and another well-known Miami lawyer, Luis Guerra, bankrolled the bribery scheme. In a rare move, a judge allowed prosecutors to review nearly 1,000 emails, text messages and recordings of phone calls between the attorneys and Manny Recio, a longtime DEA agent who after retiring went to work for the attorneys as a private investigator.

Attorney communications are normally confidential and almost always shielded from law enforcement, with limited exceptions. Prosecutors can get around that privilege if they can convince a judge that an attorney’s services were being used in furtherance of a crime — a principle known as the crime-fraud exception.

“We’re here scheming about how we’re going to make money, money, money,” Guerra said in one intercepted conversation.

Guerra has not been charged and his attorney has not commented on the case.

Prosecutors called the attorneys' communications "integral to the bribery scheme” following the 2023 convictions of Recio and former DEA agent John Costanzo Jr., veteran lawmen who are both serving federal prison terms after a jury found them guilty of bribery and honest-services wire fraud. That Manhattan trial followed a flurry of misconduct cases involving other DEA agents accused of corruption and other federal crimes.

This June 13, 2016, file photo shows Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Florida. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel via AP, File

A former state prosecutor, Macey has defended clients in several headline-grabbing cases in South Florida, including a teenager accused of killing more than a dozen cats. In recent years, he became a significant player in narcotics and money laundering cases, a lucrative line of work that involves some of the highest fees in criminal defense.

Much of the DEA corruption case turned on text messages and wiretapped phone calls. Recio repeatedly asked Costanzo to query names in a confidential database to keep abreast of investigations of interest to his new employers.

The two discussed the timing of high-profile arrests and the exact date in 2019 when prosecutors planned to charge businessman Alex Saab, then a top criminal target in Venezuela and suspected bag man for the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro.

Recio and Costanzo also discussed confidential DEA plans to arrest a high-level trafficker in the Dominican Republic whom Macey was trying to recruit as a client. César Peralta eluded capture for more than four months despite a massive search involving 700 law enforcement officials.

In exchange for the leaks, prosecutors said, Recio secretly funneled $73,000 in purchases to Costanzo, including plane tickets and a down payment on his condo in suburban Coral Gables, Florida. In 2019, Macey allegedly spent nearly $2,000 on tickets for a Yankees-Red Sox baseball game and a dinner in Manhattan’s West Village for Costanzo, himself and another then-high-ranking DEA official in Mexico.

Prosecutors said Recio had been motivated by greed, pointing to his spending habits and purchase of a 2021 Porsche Macan. The DEA agents used sham invoices and a company listing its address as a UPS store to disguise bribe payments while deleting hundreds of messages and calls to a burner phone, prosecutors said.

The conspiracy relied on middlemen, including Costanzo’s now-deceased father, himself a decorated DEA agent who prosecutors said lied to the FBI. Another alleged intermediary was DEA task force officer Edwin Pagan, who was charged last year after prosecutors said he lied under oath at the agents' 2023 trial.

Pagan, a police officer in Coral Gables, has pleaded not guilty to charges including bribery and perjury. His trial is scheduled for August.

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Goodman reported from Panama City, Panama.

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