Defense attorney takes plea deal in sprawling DWI corruption case

Yahoo

13-02-2025

Feb. 12—For nearly 30 years, Albuquerque attorney Thomas Clear III says he led a criminal racketeering enterprise that paid off generations of law enforcement officers to get his clients' DWI cases thrown out.
The admission came Wednesday as the 67-year-old Clear, at an unannounced hearing in U.S. Magistrate Court, pleaded guilty to bribery of Albuquerque Police Department officers, racketeering conspiracy, aiding and abetting, and interference with commerce by extortion. A sentencing date hasn't been set.
"Today, Thomas J. Clear III admitted to leading a decades-old criminal enterprise wherein he abandoned his own ethical duties as a lawyer, corrupted generations of law enforcement officers, and perverted the criminal justice system in order to feed his own greed," U.S. Attorney for New Mexico Alexander Uballez said in a statement to the Journal. "With this conviction, we end this ignominious scheme that has shaken the faith of all New Mexicans. But we are not done digging. Now is the time to come clean — if you were ever involved in this deceit, now is the time to come to the table."
While Clear was the fourth defendant to take a plea in recent weeks — following his former investigator and two former APD DWI officers — his account that the scheme went as far back as the mid '90s is new and raises more questions than it answers.
APD's sprawling Internal Affairs probe has traced the alleged corruption to about 2003. Another major participant who has pleaded guilty, Ricardo "Rick" Mendez, admitted going to work for Clear in 2007 and helping in the scheme beginning in 2008.
But based on Clear's plea agreement, the covert scheme spanned the administrations of five Albuquerque police chiefs, including the current APD Chief Harold Medina.
"I predicted this conspiracy went on for decades, and sure enough, Tom Clear admitted his bribery scheme dates back to 1995," Medina said in a statement Wednesday. "We worked with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office to finally expose Tom Clear's criminal scheme... As I have said, we will leave no stone unturned, even if it means going back 30 years to scrutinize the actions of officers. We are learning more details every day and we anticipate exposing more wrongdoing as our investigation continues."
An FBI investigation into the scheme began in 2023 and 12 Albuquerque police officers with links to the DWI unit have resigned, retired or been fired since then. APD spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said the department's internal investigation, which has run parallel to the FBI's, is ongoing "as detectives continue to develop new information."
Three of the officers who were placed on leave and later resigned, Honorio Alba Jr., 33, Joshua Montaño, 37, and Neill Elsman, 35, have pleaded guilty to racketeering, receiving a bribe and other charges in the case.
Like Clear, Elsman also pleaded guilty Wednesday, admitting that he joined APD's DWI unit in 2019 and began taking bribes from Clear and Mendez in 2021. Elsman's attorney could not be reached.
Attorney Thomas Clark, who is representing Clear, said his client "has taken responsibility for his actions."
Up to now, Clear has refused to comment about the allegations. But on Wednesday, Clear admitted that from around 1995 he used his law firm "and my specialized skills as an attorney to lead a DWI bribery scheme involving numerous law enforcement officers and deputies from APD, New Mexico State Police and the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office."
Prior to 2022, Clear and Mendez would arrange for officers to intentionally fail to appear at required pretrial interviews involving DWI offenders the officers arrested, according to the plea agreements. Then Clear would file motions to dismiss the proceedings, claiming the officers were necessary witnesses who didn't show up as required. And courts would dismiss the cases as a sanction.
The operation dubbed the "DWI Enterprise" by federal prosecutors evolved in recent years when Clear stated that he, Mendez and the officers "worked out another method to guarantee dismissal of the state criminal DWI-related offenses." Officers began to miss actual court hearings, or would withhold evidence, or fail to complete paperwork on those suspects they arrested who later hired Clear.
It isn't apparent from the court filings how much Clear and Mendez netted from the moneymaking scheme, but federal prosecutors contend that in April 2022, Clear and Mendez told one prospective client they would charge "$10,000 in exchange for having (the offender's) DWI charges dismissed and to avoid additional criminal charges potentially being filed."
The defendant — identified in court records only as J.B. — did not pay the $10,000 and went to another attorney. J.B. had been arrested by Montaño, who previously had shared information about J.B.'s arrest with Mendez, who contacted the defendant after he was released from custody.
Clear's plea agreement states that he distanced himself from direct involvement in meetings Mendez had with DWI offenders to set the cash payments required for a "guaranteed dismissal" or when Mendez would meet or have conversations with involved officers to discuss "specific bribe amounts or payments."
Mendez has stated in his plea agreement that Clear wanted to protect his reputation.
Clear, a Republican appointed to serve two terms on the state Public Defender Commission, has been practicing since at least 1982 when he joined his father, Thomas Clear Jr.'s law firm.
Under Clear's plea, four of the counts are each punishable by up to 20 years in prison, while five other counts are each punishable by 10 years. If those were run consecutively, the total exposure is 130 years, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office spokeswoman.