Texas Cop Gets Prison Time for Smuggling Drugs in Police Vehicle

A former Texas cop will spend more than ten years in prison for using his position to smuggle drugs and launder money. The former peace officer tried to claim that he had been doing undercover work while using his police vehicle to move drug loads across state lines, federal prosecutors said.

U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal recently sentenced 50-year-old Mohammed “Alex” Ahmed Kassem to 121 months in prison on drug possession and money laundering charges during a hearing in Houston, Texas.

A federal jury convicted Kassem earlier this year after a short trial. Kaseem had previously served as an investigator with the Waller County District Attorney’s Office and tried to claim during his trial that he was working undercover investigations. Waller County is just west of the Houston metropolitan area.

According to information provided to Breitbart Texas by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, during a sting investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigations, on three separate occasions, Kassem drove what he believed was a load of heroin from Louisiana to Houston and San Antonio using his marked police vehicle. Authorities got video recordings of the trips, the conversations leading to the trips, and financial documentation showing that Kssem had collected $31,000 for those trips and deposited it in his bank. During the trip, Kassem would hide the cash in his bulletproof vest and place the drug loads inside evidence bags as a way to avoid detection.

“Kassem was willing to use his badge for his own financial gain,” said U.S. Attorney Alamdar Hamdani in a prepared statement. “This was an important statement to corrupt law enforcement that you will be prosecuted if you go outside the bounds of the law and abuse your position of trust.”

Ildefonso Ortiz is an award-winning journalist with Breitbart Texas. He co-founded Breitbart Texas’ Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and senior Breitbart management. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. He can be contacted at Iortiz@breitbart.com.