The picture that emerges is of an approach that borrows some of the sophistication of modern banking.

The FBI’s Confidential Human Source Policy Guide, a nearly 200-page manual classified secret and obtained by The Intercept, describes how payments to FBI informants are accounted for and authorized and how these payments can quickly become serious money. In the course of a 20-year career as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, IRS, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security, Alex Diaz has taken in more than $4.9 million.įor the first time, we can now point to an internal government document that provides the framework for how informants are paid. Naseem Khan collected $230,000 following a counterterrorism sting in Lodi, California. Shahed Hussain, a prolific FBI informant, received $96,000 for his work in the Newburgh Four case. Defense lawyers have long known that informants can earn tens of thousands, even millions, of dollars. Hammad isn’t the only handsomely compensated informant working for the U.S. By Aaron’s calculations, Hammad, who previously had been convicted of aiding a conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine and was later released from immigration custody to help the FBI, had received $380,000 in government payments for his work on that one case alone. Hammad had led an FBI counterterrorism sting in Southern California that targeted four men, including Ralph Deleon, a citizen of the Philippines, and Sohiel Omar Kabir, an Afghanistan-born U.S. “Is there a limit as to how much you could be paid working for, as an FBI informant, on all of your cases?”Īaron was deploying a well-worn tactic among lawyers defending cases involving FBI informants: suggest to the jury that the informant is primarily motivated by money. “So as far as you know, there’s no limit to how much you could get paid on this case?” Aaron followed. Hammad, there’s a limit to how much we can pay you on one case’?” Aaron asked. In a Southern California courtroom in September 2014, defense attorney Jeffrey Aaron pressed an FBI informant named Mohammad Hammad about the hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments he’d received from the government.

How much does an spy agent get paid