Who is the Albuquerque defense attorney at center of ‘DWI Enterprise' scandal?
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – On Wednesday, Albuquerque attorney Thomas Clear III admitted to running what the feds call the 'DWI Enterprise' scandal. He plead guilty to nine federal charges including RICO conspiracy, bribery, and extortion. Clear now faces up to 130 years in prison.
KRQE Investigates started looking into Clear one year ago when the feds raided his law office in connection to what could be the state's largest public corruption scandal. Below is what KRQE Investigates has uncovered about Clear.
Thomas Clear III started his law career in 1982, working alongside his dad. The two founded Clear & Clear together. When his dad died in 2002, Thomas Clear III took over the family business. Starting in 2014, he served on the Public Defender Commission.
However, Clear said he stopped practicing law last summer, about six months after KRQE learned the feds investigation into his practice began.
Before it was taken down, his law firm's website read Thomas Clear III is 'The attorney you want on your side when facing DWI/DUI, misdemeanor and/or felony criminal and drug charges. He will fight to get the best possible outcome for you and your situation.'
It also stated that he represented more than 7,500 accused drunk drivers in Bernalillo, Sandoval, Valencia, and other surrounding New Mexico counties.
On Jan. 19, 2024, the feds served a search warrant at Clear's law firm. Then, three weeks later, Albuquerque police officers responded to the law firm when Clear reported a burglary. Ring camera footage shows two masked suspects show up at the office around 5 a.m. that morning.
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Body camera video from the responding APD officers showed them going inside the law firm with Clear to assess the damage.
Clear: 'They were looking for something.' Officer: 'Yeah, every cabinet has been opened. Every drawer.'
Officers found hidden storage doors open, papers strewn throughout the office, and filing cabinets open.
Clear: 'That's open.' Officer: 'Because who? For one it's just a bench. How would somebody know that? Clear: 'Nobody would know that unless…. but my paralegal.'
His Paralegal, Ricardo 'Rick' Mendez, was the first to take a plea, and admitted to working with officers to funnel people they arrested for driving drunk to his boss. The feds say Mendez joined the scheme in 2008, paying officers to not file charges for those clients or to make sure they couldn't and wouldn't show up to certain court hearings, allowing attorney Clear to request the case be dismissed.
In a previous KRQE Investigation, our team went through six years of Clear's DWI cases from 2018 through 2023 and found his average dismissal rate was 63.3%. With two APD officers who also admitted to their roles in the scheme, Honorio Alba Jr. and Joshua Montaño, during those six years, if one of them pulled you over and you hired Clear, the numbers say there was less than 10% chance you'd be held accountable.
The scheme played out in license revocation hearings too, the administrative case that plays out simultaneously with the criminal one after a DWI charge. Mendez admitted to coordinating with those officers to guarantee they wouldn't show up to those MVD hearings, allowing the accused drunk driver to keep their license and drive without any restrictions.
Records from the last three years reveal 87 officer no-shows in cases where DWI suspects hired attorney Clear. Overall, data shows that his clients kept their driver's licenses 74% of the time they had a license revocation hearing.
Now caught, Clear has lost his license after 42 years. With Wednesday's plea, he also will have to give up his law office. The feds say he laundered money out of the property with the payments from DWI offenders, made in cash inside the office. They will be seizing it.
Clear faces up to 130 years in prison.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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