LOUISIANA
Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Chad A. Scott was charged in an indictment unsealed Monday was accused of stealing thousands of dollars in drug money, according to officials.
Scott was also charged obstruction of justice, perjury, falsifying records in a federal investigation, seeking and receiving an illegal gratuity, conversion of property by an officer or employee of the United States and removing property to prevent seizures and conspiracy.
A former DEA task force officer was also charged.
Chad A. Scott, 49, of Covington, Louisiana and Rodney P. Gemar, 41, of Ponchatoula, Louisiana, the former task force officer, were charged in an indictment returned on Sept. 29.
The Advocate of Louisiana reported that “Scott’s arrest late Sunday came more than a year and a half into a secretive investigation into a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration task force that Scott led for years — a team of lawmen who investigated drug dealing across southeastern Louisiana.”
“Wearing glasses, shackled at the wrists and ankles and clad in an orange jumpsuit, Scott scanned a New Orleans courtroom full of former colleagues during a brief court appearance Monday, thumbing slowly through a copy of a 13-count indictment,” according to the Advocate.
He was represented by his defense lawyer, Matt Coman, a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted many of Scott’s drug investigations, the Advocate stated.
Scott plead not guilty, according to media reports.
Gemar is charged with two counts of unlawful conversion of property by a government officer or employee, two counts of removing property to prevent seizure and two counts of conspiracy to commit conversion and to remove property to prevent seizure. According to the indictment, Scott, Gemar and their co-conspirators committed these offenses while serving with the New Orleans Division of the DEA.
Gemar currently serves as a police officer with the Hammond, Louisiana Police Department.
Former DEA task force officer Karl Emmett Newman, 50, of Kentwood, Louisiana, was also charged with numerous offenses in a separate May 13, 2016 indictment and in an Oct. 7, 2016 superseding indictment.
Newman pleaded guilty on July 20, to unlawfully possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence and conspiring to misappropriate money seized by the DEA during the execution of a search.
Former DEA task force officer Johnny Jacob Domingue, 28, of Maurepas, Louisiana, was arrested on a criminal complaint on May 12, 2016, and was also charged in an Oct. 7, 2016 superseding indictment with falsifying records in a federal investigation. Domingue’s case remains pending.
The defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.