This makes me think of a mashup between Breaking Bad and the IT Crowd.
4
I cannot imagine betraying and testifying against El Chapo. No wonder the guy had a nervous breakdown.
9
If I were this guys 4th cousin I'd be terrified. He might as well just go for it at this point - sky diving, race car driving, swimming with the sharks, etc. What's he got to lose? Be the first person in a long time to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel!
7
One hopes Mr. Rodriguez successfully reboots his life after aiding and abetting. Wonder if anyone on Trump's 2020 team is clued in to the fact that he developed totally private, untraceable telephone communications....the ultimate "back alley"(!)
4
How did they figure out the tech guy was compromised? Just re-watched The Departed so probably it’s coloring my thinking but is the US government compromised?
9
El Chapo would have been successful at most anything, but his competition were just killers a dime a dozen.
Wow. Nice job posting a photo of this man for all of El Chapo’s posse to see. According to NPR, the court artist was forbidden by the judge to sketch the image of this informant, in order to protect him. Why did NYT find it necessary to put this man in danger itself?
23
The problem of working for someone like el Chapo is that, if the program you write for him "figuratively" hangs, you "literally" hang. Not pleasant.
3
Now there's an idea for an Office Space remake.
I find it interesting that he worked for Guzman on a contract basis. What exactly was written in this contract?
And is it actually illegal in Mexico for a private citizen to set up a private and encrypted email serv -- I mean, messaging subsystem?
If all the components Mr. Rodriguez used were commercially available tools, including FlexiSPY which has a public website and is not exactly on the "Dark Web", and Guzman was simply a paying contract customer like any other, why was he "in serious trouble" for setting it up?
Or is he in trouble for "having little experience or formal education" at the time, and thus Practicing IT Without A License or something?
4
So, we won the war on drugs? Finally, some good news!
4
@ubique Yes, and we won the war on jaywalking on the same day. All crime is solved now. Happy times!
4
I can only imagine. Getting a "call for IT support" from El Chapo must be among the top three IT horror stories. And, while this is the extreme end of IT support scenarios, it has some teaching value for (more) legal businesses. Be nice to your IT support staff, and treat them with dignity - they can really mess with you, and you won't even know it for a long time.
30
How anybody steps (or gets pulled) into the world of high-stakes narcotics trafficking and doesn't have a nervous breakdown is beyond me.
Well, back to my desk job...
26
Sad but he is a dead man walking, maybe witness protection is an option, but he has already appeared in public.
12
@Agent GG If you read carefully, the cartel guys have known that the IT guy had ratted them out since 2012. He must have been under witness protection all this time. "Appearing in public" now doesn't make his situation any worse - the traffickers have known what he looks like all along. I hope the FBI (or whoever is in charge of this) can continue keeping him safe.
4
Whenever I see these photos, the two cops escorting the drug dealer...and the perp is only wearing a BP vest, and no helmet...I have to wonder how serious the cops take the safety of their charge? The guys head is too easy a target.
10
@Boregard Notice they always leave space between themselves and their targ...err, prisoner.
Like you say, if they were serious he would have helmet and a wall of well armored bodies between him and any visibility, and any time in the open would be extremely limited.
This appears to be going through the motions so they can, later, say they did. And no faces seen either.
2
At the lowest end, studies have shown that drug dealers make less than minimum wage. What keeps them going is A) Their own addictions B)Their alternate employment avenues have dried up C)They will be killed if they quit. There is no happy retirement from the drug trade.
6
In any organization you may find yourself working.. Always be nice to the IT guy!
9
You got to feel bad for this guy. Doing his job and pursuing a career. Now he will for the rest of life take an easy breath.
1
Surely he must have know he was enabling a bad guy. Pay enough and some people will do anything. We reap what we sow.
1
@ad
I'm not sure he had much of a choice. By the time El Chapo "requests" your services, it's is too late to see your guidance counselor. You'd have better luck turning down Don Corleone.
18
Given the nature of who he was working for as well as the types of requests being made, Mr. Rodriguez should have known the type of business he was doing work for. Also just like the mob of old US days, he should have known that there was the very real potential of a limited run in the job. Rarely are those types of employment contracts terminated in the classical business sense. I am surprised that he is still walking about under his own power.
3
As a 40 year veteran of I/T myself, I have plenty of stories to tell about employers that failed to treat their I/T staff with a reasonable amount of respect. I once worked for a large retail chain with over 100 stores who lost 80% of their I/T staff in just 6 weeks after a VP in a contentious meeting about salaries called us nothing but "glorified secretaries who did nothing but type all day". To make matters worse, the company was in the middle of a multi-million dollar warehouse automation project. The company went under less than two years later when they couldn't recover from the myriad delays and other impacts losing almost their entire senior I/T staff in one fell swoop.
48
What would be more news worthy would be to find the one drug cartel guy who managed to retire successfully, without fear of death, or incarceration.
It doesn't exist.. I think collectively we all feel sorry for this guy, while also not feeling sorry for him. I'd like to think if in the same situation I would have eventually found a lower paying job, without the risks this guy sought in exchange for more money.
11
@Brett
Lo Sing Han, the heroin kingpin of SE Asia came close. He was arrested and sentenced to death for being part of a Burmese rebel army, not for narcotics, but was released and died of old age in 2013.
1
As a retired IT guy myself, I find this somewhat disturbing. IT often has deeper insight into a client's activities than anyone else, including the client himself on occasion. It behooves the IT guy to treat that information as confidential, just as he would want his own information treated. If Mr. Rodriguez could not do so, he should never have agreed to work for this class of clients.
On the flip side, this serves as a grim reminder on how much power the IT department has over day to day activities, and why they should be well treated within an organization.
5
Nope. Illegal is illegal and he has no obligation to keep it confidential. Are you suggesting that he somehow shouldn’t have come forward because of some strange IT Code of Omertà? He just never should have started such a job. Talk about a guy that needs the Witness Protection Program!
17
@Lightning14 While the law may not agree, as an IT person I felt my client's information was no less confidential than the information possessed by an attorney. I agree he should have never taken the job, but he did and everything flows on from that.
2
@mikecody I'm a retired IT person myself, and I agree with Lightning14, and with the law. Attorneys also have limitations on their clients' information. In this case, the guy was facilitating illegal activity, which is a big no-no even for attorneys (cue the infinite number of attorney jokes here, but still).
10