Miami police officer charged with helping Caribbean drug ring

A high-ranking police officer was due to appear in a federal court in Miami on Wednesday to face allegations that he led a double life as a fixer for a violent Caribbean drugs gang.

Ralph Mata, a lieutenant in the internal affairs division of the Miami-Dade police department, smoothed the passage for large quantities of cocaine to be smuggled into the US from the Dominican Republic in pallets of bananas, according to the indictment against him.

Mata, nicknamed the Milk Man by FBI investigators, provided weapons and sensitive law enforcement information to his paymasters, the complaint alleges, and received a $10,000 Rolex watch and many thousands more dollars in cash for regularly transporting drugs proceeds to and from the Caribbean.

He also came up with a plot to murder a rival gang’s leaders using hired assassins dressed in police uniforms, it is claimed, although the plan was never carried out.

Mata was due to appear before federal magistrate judge Alicia Otazo-Reyes on Wednesday afternoon to hear felony charges of aiding and abetting a conspiracy to distribute cocaine, conspiring to distribute cocaine and engaging in transactions derived from specified unlawful activity.

The conspiracy charges each carry a possible sentence of up to life imprisonment and a $10m fine, while the transaction charge has a penalty of up to 10 years in jail and $250,000 fine.

The FBI, in a statement, said the investigation was ongoing, suggesting that more details of Mata’s alleged activities over the last several years had yet to be released, including whether they believed he had help from within the ranks of law enforcement or was acting as a renegade individual.

Agents from the FBI’s division in Newark, New Jersey, said they had tracked the 45-year-old officer on at least two trips from Miami to the Dominican Republic between October 2012 and January 2013, in which he allegedly bought and carried firearms to the unnamed gang, only some of which had been recovered.

They say Mata also illegally used his position as police officer to find out information about a Drug Enforcement Administration operation against suspected gang members in New Jersey, at which $419,000 in alleged drugs proceeds were recovered, then tipped them off about the lead DEA agent’s identity.

After the raid, Mata, who has worked for the Miami police department since 1992, took on the role of “bagman” himself, investigators say, and was later rewarded with the Rolex for “fixing” the safe transportation of significant quantities of cash through security at New York’s John F Kennedy airport.

Piecing together his movements through bank, airline and phone records, and secret recordings from informants, the FBI said it determined that Mata’s role within the organisation grew to the point where he was entrusted with coming up with a plan to murder the leaders of another drugs operation.

The complaint alleges that he discussed with the gang’s senior members a plot in which two rivals would be pulled over by hired assassins with police uniforms and badges, under the guise of a traffic stop, and shot dead. “Ultimately, the [gang] decided not to move forward with the murder plot, but Mata still received a payment for setting up the meetings,” the FBI said in its statement. Mata even flew to New York to personally present the would-be killers with $5,000 and a box of cigars each, it is claimed.

Another allegation is that in early 2013 Mata provided the gang with a list of suggested drugs smuggling routes into South Florida and gave them dates on which he knew there would be no US Coastguard patrols. As a safeguard, he allegedly offered to accompany shipments with a retired police dog and explain he was conducting a canine narcotics training exercise if the gang was stopped.

A spokeswoman for the chief of the Miami-Dade police department would not comment on the case on Wednesday, saying it was an FBI investigation. But department records show that Mata has worked in internal affairs since 2010 and was previously credited with helping to dismantle two major drugs rings in South Florida.

A neighbour in the town of Pembroke Pines told the Miami Herald that he often saw Mata playing in his garden with his two young sons.