State widens investigation of FBI scandal

Wednesday, July 11, 2001 | 11:09 a.m.

The Nevada Division of Investigations has expanded its probe into whether state laws were violated in the FBI's secrets-for-sale scandal, the Sun has learned.

A team of agents has been assigned to the criminal investigation, which has been broadened to include the activities of a Las Vegas Municipal Court intake services officer facing federal charges of selling confidential FBI records to a local private detective.

The officer, Mary Ellen Weeks, 43, and Maria Emeterio, 34, an investigator with the attorney general's office, were arrested in Las Vegas June 27 by FBI agents on federal theft and obstruction of justice charges filed in New York. Both have pleaded innocent and are free on $50,000 bond.

Richard Varner, acting deputy chief of the Division of Investigations, confirmed Tuesday that three or four agents in Las Vegas are participating in the state probe into the activities of Weeks and Emeterio.

But Varner declined to discuss the investigation.

"The investigation is ongoing," Varner said. "It will be completed as soon as possible."

Sources said agents already have begun interviewing witnesses in Las Vegas and are researching what state laws Weeks and Emeterio may have broken.

Late last week agents seized Weeks' computer at Municipal Court, sources said.

The investigation, sources said, also is attempting to determine whether anyone else may have assisted the two law enforcement officers in leaking confidential FBI information to private detective Mike Levin, a former FBI agent.

The employers of both Weeks and Emeterio asked the Division of Investigations, which is part of the Department of Public Safety, to conduct the criminal inquiry.

Weeks, a 13-year Municipal Court veteran on paid administrative leave, and Emeterio, who resigned the day she was taken into custody, are among 10 people charged in New York in the federal investigation. Also charged is James J. Hill, a 51-year-old security analyst for the Las Vegas FBI office.

Levin, 36, who pleaded guilty in the secrets-for-sale scheme in New York on June 25, is cooperating in the investigation. He has told FBI agents that he bought top-secret information from Weeks, Emeterio and Hill and then sold it to criminal targets, including organized crime members.

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

The FBI has charged Weeks and Emeterio with selling Levin NCIC reports for $100 apiece beginning in 1999.

Court documents obtained by the Sun show that Emeterio -- a single mother of three children who was hired by the attorney general in 1995 -- was experiencing financial problems months before she allegedly began selling information to Levin.

Emeterio testified under oath last year that she temporarily resigned from the attorney general's office on April 1, 1998, so that she could cash out the funds she had accumulated from the state Public Employees Retirement System.

She said she was re-hired the next working day after she had received her money.

The documents show Emeterio reported that she cashed out for "financial" and "personal" reasons.

Emeterio did not testify how much PERS money she withdrew, and PERS Executive Officer George Pyne said Tuesday that state laws prohibited him from disclosing the figure.

But it was estimated that the amount could be between $10,000 and $12,000, based on her annual $39,386 salary at the time. Under the most popular PERS plan, state employees can contribute roughly 10 percent of their salary to the system and receive matching funds from their employer.

Emeterio would have been able to withdraw only the funds she contributed.

The court documents 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. She was one of only four people in the office who had access to NCIC.

Hill, a 10-year FBI veteran, is in federal custody on his way to New York to face federal theft and obstruction of justice charges.

He reportedly had access to national security and electronic surveillance information, as well as confidential informants and witnesses data stored in the FBI's computer system.

Levin, who is in federal custody in New York, has told FBI agents that he sold the classified FBI information he received from Hill, Weeks and Emeterio for $100,000.

Six people, including 53-year-old Las Vegan Robert Potter, are charged with buying the information.