A 25-year DEA veteran who once helped run the agency’s financial operations has been indicted for allegedly offering to launder $12 million for CJNG, move cocaine, and discuss weapons for a group Washington now calls a foreign terrorist organization.
Paul Campo, 61, of Oakton, Virginia, retired in January 2016 as Deputy Chief of the DEA’s Office of Financial Operations — the unit built to track cartel cash. In December 2025, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York unsealed charges against Campo and associate Robert Sensi, 75, of Boca Raton, Florida. The counts include narcoterrorism conspiracy, cocaine distribution conspiracy, material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, and money laundering conspiracy.
They were caught in a sting. A confidential source directed by law enforcement posed as a CJNG contact. Prosecutors say the pair never dealt with actual cartel members and the money never reached the group. The government still alleges they:
- Agreed to launder about $12 million in purported narcotics proceeds
- Converted roughly $750,000 in cash into cryptocurrency
- Made a payment tied to about 220 kilograms of cocaine they believed would be sold in the United States for around $5 million, with a cut coming back to them
- Discussed helping obtain commercial drones, AR-15s, M4-style rifles, grenade launchers, and RPGs, and talked about logistics that could aid trafficking
Campo allegedly leaned on his old title and experience, offering to act as a “strategist.” Sensi, according to court papers, touted Campo’s former access and contacts. Both pleaded not guilty. A magistrate ordered them detained. The case remains pending before Judge Paul G. Gardephe.
CJNG was designated a foreign terrorist organization in February 2025. The group is a major source of fentanyl and cocaine and uses extreme violence. That designation is why the charges go beyond ordinary drug and money-laundering counts.
Campo is an Obama-era senior official in the sense that he rose through the DEA and left in early 2016. The alleged scheme, however, is described as beginning in late 2024 — years after he left government. The indictment does not accuse Barack Obama or name a broader conspiracy of sitting officials. What it does show is a former insider who, prosecutors say, was willing to sell the skills the public paid him to use against cartels.
That is the part that lands. The badge is not a lifetime immunity card. A sting that records a retired financial-ops chief talking crypto, cocaine payments, and hardware with someone he believed was CJNG is the kind of case agencies used to bury or never bring. DEA Administrator Terrance Cole put it bluntly: they will not look the other way because someone once wore the badge.
Whether this case produces cooperators, more targets, or just two convictions is still unknown. Recordings and surveillance exist. Pressure to flip will be high. Follow-on activity, if any, will show whether this was an isolated betrayal or a window into something larger.
For now the facts are public and ugly: a man who spent a career hunting cartel money is accused of offering to wash it, fund a load, and talk weapons for a designated terrorist organization. That is not a rumor. It is an unsealed federal indictment.
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