FBI files sold to mob figures: Las Vegas analyst is charged with stealing secrets

Tuesday, June 19, 2001 | 11:05 a.m.

A confidential informant has told the FBI that he sold investigative information obtained from a just-arrested Las Vegas FBI employee to organized crime members and other criminal targets.

The employee, James J. Hill, a 51-year-old security analyst for the Las Vegas FBI, was taken into custody locally last week on a criminal complaint filed against him in New York. He faces a 3 p.m. Wednesday detention hearing before U.S. Magistrate Lawrence Leavitt.

Hill was charged in the six-page complaint with obstruction of justice and stealing and selling the top-secret FBI information for cash.

The informant, a New York private investigator, said he had paid Hill $25,000 for criminal files since November 1999.

"The FBI and its many hard-working, dedicated employees should not be judged by the actions of one individual," Las Vegas FBI chief Grant Ashley said in a statement Monday. "The FBI is committed to the highest degree of professionalism, and any allegation of misconduct will be appropriately addressed."

The New York complaint alleged that Hill, an Air Force veteran who has worked for the Las Vegas FBI for several years, had access to national security and electronic surveillance information as well as confidential informants and witnesses data stored in the FBI's nationwide computer system.

"CI (confidential informant) admitted that the defendant has provided CI with classified FBI records pertaining to organized crime investigations, white collar crime investigations and investigations involving international alien smuggling, which CI sold to members of organized crime and other criminal targets," the complaint said.

New York FBI agent Demetrius Barkoukis also suggested in the complaint that the confidential informant may have provided secret FBI information obtained from Hill to potential FBI targets in other countries.

Barkoukis said the confidential informant's phone records showed that he had communications with people in Mexico and Cuba and that his passport listed recent visits to the drug cartel cities of Medillin and Bogata, Colombia.

FBI agents learned of Hill's reported clandestine activities after they arrested the informant in Oyster Bay, N.Y., Thursday on charges of stealing and selling classified FBI information, the complaint said.

When he was taken into custody, the complaint added, the informant was in possession of numerous FBI documents, and he later agreed to cooperate with agents.

The informant told agents that he had recruited Hill in 1999 and that Hill had provided him with "hundreds of different classified FBI records and documents pertaining to criminal cases and grand jury investigations," the complaint said.

The records obtained from Hill also were sold to attorneys and criminal defendants in New York, Long Island and elsewhere, the complaint said.

Hill was arrested at 7:45 p.m on Friday as he left the FBI office in Las Vegas.

"At the time of his arrest, Hill admitted that he had been accessing FBI records and documents relating to criminal investigations and providing them to CI for which he was paid by CI," the complaint said.

Ashley said that as a precaution, the FBI was conducting a "national security damage assessment" as a result of Hill's arrest.

FBI officials would not discuss who specifically wound up with the information allegedly provided by Hill.