The Guam director of corrections said it’s possible an ongoing investigation into corruption by corrections officers helping with drug trafficking could conclude in “a couple months” with names sent to authorities for arrest. Fred Bordallo, Jr., in an interview with Kandit today, said he has suspected since becoming corrections director in August 2023 that contraband such as drugs and cell phones are entering the prison through conspiracy involving corrections officers.
With the recent federal cases showing the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has discovered at least two drug trafficking organizations led by a DOC inmate serving a life sentence for murder, Mr. Bordallo said the public can be assured that local and internal investigation into who at DOC has been helping the criminal enterprise began even before the federal charges. And that investigation, which is being monitored and assisted by the Office of the Attorney General, should produce evidence of the involvement of corrections officers in just a matter of months.
The allegations against murder convict Edward Glen Demapan and others in two separate criminal cases in the U.S. District Court of Guam are staggering. If true, the crimes would outdo even the Henry Alvendia and Boom Mantanona police corruption cases in scope and breadth. In one case, Mr. Demapan is alleged to have conspired with DOC officer Trevor Wolford to distribute fentanyl and a far more dangerous drug, N-pyrrolidino protonitazene, outside the prison. Mr. Demapan is now in federal detention. Mr. Wolford was arrested but released on pre-trial conditions. He remains a DOC employee, but is not allowed to be near the inmates and detainees.
In the other case, which remains sealed in Guam, but was unsealed in a Texas district, Mr. Demapan is accused of conspiring with several people in Houston and in Guam to traffic meth throughout the island. The federal complaint describes the movement of pounds of meth from the Houston area into Guam, but does not detail all the meth intercepted during the alleged conspiracy.
Sources have claimed that the conspirators trafficked nearly a ton of meth into Guam. If that is true, this would be the largest drug trafficking case involving meth in Guam history. To put this into perspective, one ton of meth is enough to keep the entire population on Guam high on the drug for a week.
While no nexus is provided between the cases in the publicly available documents, the commonalities are Mr. Demapan and how he was assisted in leading the drug trafficking organizations: the use of multiple cell phones from his prison cell.
In the Kandit interview, Mr. Bordallo explained that all DOC personnel enter and exit the Mangilao facility through a main control room. There, he said, every person – himself included – is inspected by a guard, with a log of all items being brought into the facility. Personnel bringing in their personal cell phones must have prior authorization to carry those cell phones into the facility, he said. And when they leave, the same items they clocked in with must also be the same items they carry out.
He said that the scheduling of the main control room security guards is determined by his upper level commanders and constantly changes.
The discovery this year of large supplies of drugs, drug tools, cell phones, and other contraband points – he speculates and admits – to the collusion of corrections officers with inmates.
In fact, prior to Mr. Demapan’s federal arrest in May, the inmate was housed in DOC’s Post 16, which is the general population area. That is where the DEA with the help of local law enforcement and acting on information from a confidential source, allegedly discovered drugs, drug paraphernalia, cell phones, and other contraband. He was then moved to DOC’s Post 6, which is a much more secure area for more dangerous inmates. On June 10, according to a DOC report, officers discovered inside Mr. Demapan’s cell and on top of his bed, “two smashed cellphones, multiple chargers, two SIM cards, and a glass pipe with a bulbous end containing a white powdery substance suspected to be methamphetamine.”
And while it is one thing for people outside the prison to throw drugs over the fence and into the prison, it is quite something else when a person confined to the prison is orchestrating the distribution of meth outside of it.
Watch our full interview with Mr. Bordallo here:
