It was a warm April afternoon, the Arizona sun beating down on a long line of cars waiting to cross into Arizona. U.S. Customs Inspector Rodolfo Molina looked down the line, identifying the green Ford Crown Victoria that had been described to him.

When the Ford arrived at Molina's gate, he nodded casually, allowing it to pass without inspection. For his simple lack of scrutiny he was paid handsomely, $20,000 in cash. The vehicle was later found to be transporting cocaine with a street value estimated at more than $10 million.

Inspector Molina, now serving 27 years in a federal prison, was convicted of pocketing about $250,000 during three years working as a traitor for Mexican drug cartels. His job was simple: to allow vehicles loaded with drugs into Arizona.

Molina is one of more than 100 Border Patrol and Customs Service agents who have been convicted of allowing vehicles packed with illegal drugs to cross the U.S. border.

Even as immigration officials boast of more agents serving along the border, drug-related corruption among existing agents is surfacing at an alarming rate, according to both public records and expert interviews. It's a dangerous trend that has gone unreported by most Arizona media.

A Marked Man

The sun was setting, and U.S. Customs Special Agent Lee Morgan, II was sitting in a Motel 6 in Douglas, Arizona, preparing to sell about $20,000 in assault rifles to a drug cartel weapons buyer. Morgan had packed the trunk of a late-model sedan with AK-47s.

When the representative of the cartel arrived and entered the motel room, he surprised Morgan with a seemingly unlimited budget and a desire for more than just guns. He also wanted Morgan to smuggle grenades, rocket launchers and M-60 machine guns from the U.S. Army base at Fort Huachuca.

Morgan was working undercover, posing as a corrupt military official. The request confirmed his suspicion: drug cartels were buying U.S. weapons from dirty Army and National Guard personnel.

In line with Morgan's suspicion, a single FBI sting in 2005 nabbed 71 National Guard and other federal agents smuggling narcotics into Arizona, some of them even driving a government-issued Hummer loaded with cocaine to a Phoenix resort.

"These are multi-billion dollar businesses," Morgan says of the cartels. "Their financial resources are unlimited. They know what time government agents wake up, where they work, what kind of car their wife drives."

During his 20 years spent investigating corruption in Border Patrol and Customs, Morgan was shot, burned, dragged and nearly killed. In that time, he says he saw a steady increase in cartel corruption. When he retired last year as a Special Agent, Morgan had a mental list of inspectors, border town cops and Border Patrol agents who he believed couldn't be trusted.

"You have to have a scorecard to keep track of who the bad badges are and who the good guys are," Morgan says. "Just don't write in ink because it could all change the next day."

Sitting today in the kitchen of his ranch house in north Texas, Morgan has a .40 caliber Glock on his hip and a military assault rifle leaning against the wall, both within fast reach. According to DEA documentation, a cartel contract is still out on his life.

It doesn't help that he just published a 500-page memoir, The Reaper's Line, detailing how the cartel's well-financed arms are reaching further across the border. For those hoping to understand the U.S. drug wars, Morgan's memoir may be the most revealing resource available. He lifts the lid on a sun-sizzled pressure cooker packed with money, sex, drugs and murder, a culture current government employees seem less willing to reveal.

Spreading Like a Cancer

As border security has increased, so has the complex game of cat and mouse. Perpetrators on both sides offer information for money in a world of organized crime so ruthless it makes the notorious Italian mafia look like a bunch of playground tusslers.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Rapp doesn't expect drug corruption in Arizona to wane any time soon. Rapp, who supervises a team of organized crime prosecutors, says the number of bribed officers will continue to increase as thousands more are stationed on the border.

"Statistically, the more people you have at the border, you have a higher rate of interdiction," Rapp says, adding that the problem may never let up because Arizona has become a distribution hub for narcotics across North America.

"Arizona is just kind of a meat locker for the rest of the country. The drugs come in here, but they're quickly transported across to the eastern seaboard by a variety of techniques: tractor-trailers and postal service," Rapp says.

No single agency, Border Patrol, Customs or otherwise, can be labeled corrupt, but bribed individuals have been discovered within nearly every agency, from dirty National Guard rookies to a drug-smuggling sheriff and even a supervising FBI agent who enjoyed a country club membership and lavish trips to Las Vegas all on a drug cartel's dime.

Last year in Mexico, the blood war between competing cartels killed more than 2,000 people, according to The Miami Herald.

In the midst of this chaos, rookie Customs and Border Patrol agents are paid about $35,000 a year to stand in the Arizona heat, snagging suspicious vehicles or booking illegal crossers. Often, bribes in the tens of thousands of dollars for a single load are simply too tempting. Whether it's $20,000 duct-taped in a trash bag, an attractive Mexican girlfriend or a new truck, more agents and inspectors are being bought off.

"It's a whole different world, the corruption," Morgan says of the border now compared to 30 years ago, when he was a rookie Border Patrol agent. "I've seen it grow and expand like a cancer. The corruption used to be predominantly on the other side of the border. Not any more."

Delilah and the Druglord

No one but Rodolfo Molina knows exactly where he was when he accepted his first bribe as a Customs Inspector. But after a five-year investigation, Lee Morgan at least knows how it started.

It could have been in a bar or at the grocery store that she first bumped into him. She was tan, thin and flirtatious. Molina had no way of knowing she worked for the largest drug trafficker in Mexico, or that he'd been targeted as a susceptible agent.

Soon he was cheating on his wife. His new girlfriend started talking to him about how he might make some big money. By the time Molina fled Douglas with his girlfriend, he was so wrapped up in narcotics that he continued working for the cartel.

Investigators found a steel safe in Molina's garage containing papers with deposit figures scrawled in ink, $20,000, $10,000 totaling nearly $250,000. Inside Molina's house they found an arsenal of weapons, $2,000 stuffed in a phone book and $1,000 hidden in a bedroom closet.
"It's a fact that the drug cartels keep up a stable of women, who are recruited by the cartels to specifically work at hooking inspectors, agents and law officers on the U.S. side of the border," Morgan says.

He says the pattern was almost too obvious during his investigations. "Sooner or later the female approaches the inspector through pillow talk, telling him about all the money he's missing out on," Morgan says.

"I could tell you of at least five agents and inspectors that I worked on, just in Douglas alone, where that was the tactic," he says. All five are now serving time in federal prisons. None would agree to be interviewed for this story.

Agents like Molina can make off with about a quarter-million dollars or more, and if not for their extravagant lifestyles or obvious affairs, they may never be caught. Morgan says the current justice system takes far too long to prosecute dirty badges. All in all, it took more than five years to prosecute Molina. When he was finally arrested, the former Customs Inspector was wearing a baseball cap with a marijuana leaf embroidered to the front.

"The cartel really covets and trusts these guys. They get really high-dollar drug attorneys and drag out the trials," Morgan says. "I had a carbon copy case on Molina's partner. He was doing it all the same way. But the U.S. Attorney who prosecuted Molina said, 'I just can't take another one. I can't prosecute another one. The last one took 10 years.'"

"Plomo o Plata" (Lead or Silver)

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Rapp says lengthy prosecutions are simply the nature of organized crime.

"It's rare to have direct evidence on video or record of them waving a vehicle through," Rapp says. "We may not be able to prove drug trafficking. Most cases are circumstantial. For example, if their lifestyle is well above what you'd expect for somebody on an inspector or agent's salary."

Rapp has put more than one corrupt inspector behind bars by prosecuting for tax fraud. In the case of Yuma resident Ronnie Brickey, Brickey reported $31,415 in income but had actually spent $149,730.70 during a tax year.

In the case of INS inspector Michael Craig Anderson, Rapp had to wait several years until an informant recorded Anderson confessing in a secret conversation. Anderson's wife was also in on the bribe, helping him hide more than $200,000 in cash.

Sitting in his downtown Phoenix office, Rapp may seem physically removed from the battle with drug cartel violence, but his request not to have his photo printed for this story demonstrates he's well aware of his violent opponents.

Morgan and Rapp have never met, but they share a common awareness of the cartel's reach and power north of the border. They also share an appreciation for the integrity of honest federal and state agents who guard Arizona's border day and night.

"It's important, with public corruption, to remember that these are only bad apples. They do not represent these agencies as a whole," Rapp says. "This corruption undermines a lot of others who do a very good job. There are very, very good people who are standing in 115 degrees every day, doing their best to protect the U.S. from drug traffic and terrorist threats."

Looking out the kitchen window of his Texas ranch, Lee Morgan agrees. Outside the blue violets are poking through a spring blanket of Indian paintbrushes and tough green grass. That tranquility is contrasted by Morgan's alert awareness of potential intruders. It's the cost of standing up to a relentless opponent.

"'Plomo o plata' (lead or silver), that's what they say. We can either kill you or we can pay you money, but you're not going to stop us," Morgan says. "That's the way they do it in Mexico. The plomo o plata attitude is bleeding over the border in the U.S."