The usual route to beating the DEA in a case is arguing that the evidence is insufficient.  But for Armando Angulo, the win comes from the opposite.  The government has dismissed charges against the Panama native because there is too much evidence, more than they can manage to keep.

From the AP :

Armando Angulo was indicted in 2007 in a multimillion dollar scheme that involved selling prescription drugs to patients who were never examined or even interviewed by a physician. A federal judge in Iowa dismissed the charge last week at the request of prosecutors, who want to throw out the many records collected over their nine-year investigation to free up space.

The Miami doctor fled to his native Panama after coming under investigation in 2004, and Panamanian authorities say they do not extradite their own citizens. Given the unlikelihood of capturing Angulo and the inconvenience of maintaining so much evidence, prosecutors gave up the long pursuit.

“Continued storage of these materials is difficult and expensive,” wrote Stephanie Rose, the U.S. attorney for northern Iowa. She called the task “an economic and practical hardship” for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The accumulated evidence came from an investigation into internet pharmacies and phony prescriptions. No big deal there, and the government obtained convictions of 26 defendants, including 19 doctors.  Apparently, this is a great way for physicians to make a few extra bucks to pay for the rented Porsche Panamera.  In the course, the DEA got its hands on a bunch of physical and electronic evidence.

The evidence took up 5 percent of the DEA’s worldwide electronic storage. Agents had also kept several hundred boxes of paper containing 440,000 documents, plus dozens of computers, servers and other bulky items.

While this may sound like a lot if you had to store it in your living room or on your iPad, that two terabytes eats up 5% of the DEA’s worldwide storage capacity is, well, shocking.  A quick look online shows that a 3 TB external drive costs about $140, which the DEA could handle out of the donut budget if they wanted. As for the boxes of paper, they maintain massive amounts of warehouse space around the country to hold physical evidence, and several (however many that means) hundred boxes is a big, but hardly outrageous, amount.  It’s not out of the ordinary for a case to involve a few hundred bankers boxes of paper.

And yet, the government moved to dismiss, which District Court Judge Linda Reade did with prejudice.

“Continued storage of these materials is difficult and expensive,” wrote Stephanie Rose, the U.S. attorney for northern Iowa. She called the task “an economic and practical hardship” for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The revelations from this motion, if true, are amazing and appalling. Given the scope of electronic data involved in investigations, the claim that two terabytes constitutes five percent of the DEA’s storage capacity is laughable. It suggests that they’re screwing with us, and have no ability to do 90% of the things they claim or we fear they’re up to. 

Indeed, while we worry about their creating mirror images of hard drives of thousands of computers, or obtaining digital evidence from hundreds of thousands of cellphones, this isn’t conceivably possible if the total storage capacity of the DEA is 40 terabytes. It just can’t be.

This raises two problems, the first being that the representations made to Judge Reade are total nonsense, and the government lied to a judge to obtain the relief sought.  The second is that they ditched the case against Angulo because it wasn’t worth their while. 

With Angulo in Panama, and unlikely to either be extradited or return on his own to face the charges, the government’s decision to allocate scarce resources elsewhere might be a reasonable thing to do.  But then, it could similarly pare down its case, thus reducing the need to maintain the bulk of its physical and digital evidence, and remain prepared to address the crime(s) remaining. 

Or, it could just sit on the indictment and, in the event Angulo ever came into the DEA’s clutches, deal with the spoliation of evidence later.  But why move to dismiss?  Why make it public?  Why tell a judge that the DEA has less storage capacity than mom and pop grocery stores, provided they have a teenager who’s a gamer?

And in case you wonder why you (or I) should care about the prosecution of Angulo, and any potential recovery of his ill-gotten gains, the allegations include obtaining $6.5 million in Medicaid through writing phony scripts.  That would be $6.5 million paid for by our tax dollars, intended to aid the poor (Panamanian physicians excepted).  Clearly, this loot could be put to better use, like buying a bunch more terabytes for the DEA.