FBI-leaks investigation widens

Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2001 | 11:03 a.m.

A second investigator in the Nevada attorney general's office has come under the scrutiny of state agents in the FBI's secrets-for-sale scandal.

The investigator, a 31-year-old veteran of three years with the attorney general's office, was close friends with Maria Emeterio, who resigned from the office in June following her arrest on federal charges of selling classified FBI information to private detective Mike Levin.

Emeterio, 34, was charged with giving Levin top-secret records from the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC), a computerized criminal database used by law enforcement agencies across the country. Levin then sold the records to his criminal clients.

Following her arrest, state agents with the Nevada Division of Investigations launched a probe into Emeterio's ties to Levin to determine whether others at the attorney general's office were involved in the theft of the FBI documents.

The FBI in New York has been conducting a separate investigation, which has resulted in the arrests of 10 people, including Levin and James J. Hill, a Las Vegas FBI security analyst who also has been charged with selling Levin confidential information.

Levin, a former FBI agent Las Vegas, has pleaded guilty to buying the stolen FBI documents and is cooperating with federal authorities.

State agents traveled to New York, where Levin is in federal custody, to interview him for the Nevada probe.

Jerry Hafen, supervisor of the Las Vegas office of the Division of Investigations, said Levin told state agents that both Emeterio and the second investigator, a woman whose name is being withheld by the Sun until charges are filed, had been moonlighting for the private detective.

Both investigators, Hafen said, worked undercover for Levin at local bars attempting to determine whether employees were stealing.

The state probe did not turn up evidence that the second investigator sold NCIC information to Levin, Hafen said.

But Hafen said the second investigator allegedly was present when Emeterio provided secret FBI documents to Levin and was paid "hush" money by Emeterio not to talk about the document exchanges.

Hafen said agents are considering criminal misconduct charges, including accepting bribes, against the second investigator, who reportedly had been working part time for Levin since January 2000.

"She had a sworn duty to uphold as a police officer," Hafen said. "She knew this information was being given out."

Within the next two weeks, Hafen said, agents plan to submit the evidence they've accumulated against the second investigator to the district attorney's office for possible prosecution.

The investigator left the attorney general's office earlier this year and went to work Aug. 6 as an agent for the state Gaming Control Board. But she resigned Aug. 20 amid the state probe into her links to Emeterio and Levin.

Hafen said Emeterio likely will escape state charges because she's facing federal charges.

The state probe also has not turned up evidence that others at Las Vegas Municipal Court provided NCIC information to Levin, Hafen added.

Mary Ellen Weeks, a veteran Municipal Court intake services officer, was charged in June by the FBI with selling confidential NCIC records to Levin. She is on administrative leave.

Hill, a 10-year veteran of the FBI office in Las Vegas, reportedly is seeking a deal to cooperate with FBI agents in New York, where he remains behind bars on no bail.

He was said to have had access to national security and electronic surveillance information, as well as confidential informant and witness data stored in the FBI's computer system.

Levin has told FBI agents that he sold the information he received from Hill, Emeterio and Weeks to criminal targets for $100,000.