The U.S. government has paid out at least $548 million to informants working for the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in recent years, multiple federal audits found as they slammed the agencies for wasteful spending.
Among the questionable payments made to the informants include a parcel worker who was paid $1.4 million, an Amtrak employee who was paid nearly a $1 million and an airline worker who received $655,000.
In total, the FBI spent $294 million between 2012 and 2018, while the DEA paid at least $237 million from 2011 to 2015, and the ATF had had spent about $17.2 million from 2012 to 2015, Forbes reported.
The Office of the Inspector General conducted a damning audit of the DEA in 2016, questioning why half of the 18,000 active informants it had at the time were paid nearly $240 million in the past five years.
Another worrying case of the DEA overspending on informants came when they paid an Amtrak employee nearly $1 million during their more than 20-year-long contract.
Another alarm about the way the DEA paid informants rang when the OIG found that the agency incentivized informants to provide tips through payments.
DEA special agents told the OIG that informants provided more 'tips' to the DEA in hopes of getting paid more, with one commercial airline employee providing 130 different tips about 'interdiction consensual encounter cases,' or intercepting encounters between police and suspects.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to discern fact from fiction, and unfortunately the media has a strong bias. They spin stories to make conservatives look bad and will go to great lengths to avoid reporting on the good that comes from conservative policies. There are a few shining lights in the media landscape-brave conservative outlets that report the truth and offer a different perspective. We must support conservative outlets like this one and ensure that our voices are heard.
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