Here's how the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) uses your tax dollars – to pay a creep to pretend he loves a woman, play with her children, and persuade her to break the law for him so that the agents can swoop in and arrest her. That's what happened to Jennifer Padilla, who met a federally paid professional snitch known as Informant No. 9097.
From the Santa Fe Reporter:
They had sex several times in the publicly funded halfway house where Padilla lived with other recently released women. But it was more than a physical attraction. He complimented her, listened, drove her to work—setting himself apart from the abusive men she’d loved before.
When he held her youngest daughter’s hand, strolling along Tingley Beach in search of digital Pokémon, it felt like a fresh chance at having a family.
There was darkness, for sure. She fed his marijuana and ecstasy habits with cash. Sometimes he disappeared for days. And he encouraged her relapse, slipping her an ecstasy pill one night at the halfway house. That ended a stretch of nearly two drug-free years in her decade-long battle with addiction.
But she had fallen in love with him. So when he asked her to set up a drug deal—scared for his safety after he claimed he’d been robbed—she called an old acquaintance and made an introduction.
