A confidential informant that worked for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office for about one year is accused of setting up fake drug deals that have compromised more than two dozen cases, according to Sheriff Bob Gualtieri.
"When you're dealing with informants, you're dealing with bad people and they do bad things," Gualtieri said.
The Sheriff said narcotics detectives recently discovered the problem when confidential informant, Anthony Walker, 45, set up a drug deal where an undercover deputy purchased 35 morphine pills for $1,000 from a woman on Dec. 5. Detectives tested the pills and discovered they were a muscle relaxer and arrested the woman for dealing counterfeit drugs.
During an interview with the suspect, the woman told detectives that she received the pills from Walker and had no knowledge of them being counterfeit, according to a report.
Sheriff Gualtieri said he gives his detectives a lot of credit for listening to the woman's story and acting on the information she provided.
"We were able to detect this ourselves, we listened to what we were being told by the person who had claimed that Walker had done this and it wasn't discounted," he said. "We investigated it thoroughly and have taken the appropriate action by charging Walker and notifying the proper prosecuting authorities."
Gualtieri said detectives discovered two other cases where fake drugs were used and that has compromised all the cases connected to Walker, who began working as a C.I. for the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office in Oct. of 2013, and was paid $7,260 for identifying 27 drug dealing suspects.
Detectives arrested 9 of those suspects and said they've contacted prosecutors in those cases about dropping the charges. The 16 other suspects were not arrested and the Sheriff said their cases will be closed.
Sheriff Gualtieri said Walker stole $3,900 in the fake drug deals he set up. Walker was arrested on three trafficking charges on Wednesday and is being held in the Pinellas Jail on a $90,000 bond. Gualtieri said if Walker bonds out he will not be under protection.
"Quite honestly, that's one of the reasons I'm naming him. The message needs to be sent," Gualtieri said. "You want to cooperate with law enforcement that's fine. We want to get these drugs off the street but if you want to play games, we'll play."
The Sheriff said he also identified Walker to show the public that his office will not protect a bad confidential informant.
"A few years ago, we ran into some problems in narcotics and we made some significant changes in our narcotics division. We had a cultural change in how we do business in narcotics," he said. "I do believe that the fact that this detective and these supervisors listened to what they were being told and reacted to it appropriately is a result of the changes we made here in the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office."