State to investigate LV suspect in FBI case

Tuesday, July 3, 2001 | 10:58 a.m.

The Nevada Division of Investigations is launching a probe into the activities of a former investigator for the attorney general's office charged with selling confidential FBI information.

"We are going to open an investigation," Richard Varner, acting deputy chief of the Division of Investigations told the Sun Monday. "At this time we can't release any details."

The investigator, Maria Emeterio, pleaded innocent in federal court in New York Monday to theft and obstruction of justice charges and was released on $50,000 bail.

Emeterio, 34, assigned to the attorney general's Missing Children's Unit, resigned last Wednesday when she was arrested by FBI agents.

Steve George, a spokesman for Attorney General General Frankie Sue Del Papa, said the attorney general asked the Division of Investigations to look at Emeterio's reported role in the FBI's secrets-for-sale scandal on Friday.

George said the division will determine whether anyone else at the attorney general's office was involved in passing along secret FBI information.

At the same time, the attorney general's office is conducting an internal review to prevent further FBI leaks, George said.

Emeterio, who was hired by the attorney general's office in 1995, has been accused of selling classified FBI records to Las Vegas private detective Mike Levin, who is cooperating in the FBI probe, which so far has resulted in 10 arrests.

Levin, a 36-year-old former FBI agent, pleaded guilty in the scheme last week and is being held at a federal correctional facility in Brooklyn. He has told agents he sold the information he received from Emeterio and others in law enforcement, including an FBI security analyst, to criminal targets.

All of the records Levin reportedly bought from Emeterio came from the FBI's National Crime Information Center, a computerized criminal data base used by law enforcement agencies across the country.

Court documents obtained by the Sun show that Emeterio oversaw the attorney general's use of NCIC prior to her arrest.

She testified that she was given special training by the Nevada Highway Patrol on NCIC's confidential procedures and then passed on what she learned to others in the attorney general's office.

George, however, said Monday that Emeterio did not train anyone in the attorney general's office on how to use NCIC.

Emeterio, the court records show, was one of only four people in the office who had access to NCIC.

The former investigator, the documents report, also testified that she was the attorney general's training officer for Scope, the computerized data base maintained by Metro Police in Clark County.

She said that she provided her fellow investigators with identification numbers so they could gain access to Scope's information.

Levin, meanwhile, has told FBI agents that he also obtained confidential investigative documents from James J. Hill, a local FBI security analyst, and Mary Ellen Weeks, a Municipal Court intake services officer.

Weeks, 43, a 13-year veteran at Municipal Court, pleaded innocent in New York Monday and was released on $50,000 bail. The 51-year-old Hill, who still is in custody, is being taken to New York this week to answer the charges against him.

The FBI has charged Emeterio with selling 20 NCIC reports at $100 a piece to Levin since 1999.

But her lawyer, Anthony LaPinta, denied in court Monday that Emeterio was involved in the scheme.

LaPinta said Emeterio, a mother of three, was working a second job as an assistant to Levin.

Another Las Vegan, Robert Potter, also pleaded innocent Monday.

A federal magistrate, however revoked Potter passport and ordered him held without bail because he is under indictment in a securities fraud case involving associates of the Genovese mob family in New York.

Potter is charged with buying confidential information about that case from Levin.

The Associated Press

contributed to this report.