so they the FBI raided my house 3 weeks ago yesterday they raided my paralal house um they raided his house hard like the tanks and I'm scared to death a massive ring of corruption was just exposed in of all places Albuquerque New Mexico this is a Stranger Than Fiction real life better call sa/ breaking bad situation a massive group of crooked cops in three different agencies taking a massive amount of bribes all centered around one criminal defense attorney who was The Mastermind of this ring of corruption that has been going on for at least 30 years this is the attorney Thomas clear III I terrified that I see there is a bullet on the ground here there should be no bullet here wow my life has gone so upside down and all I've ever done is Love on my clients and help people right especially police officers and here I thought all lawyers were idiots no only half of us are idiots the other half are cruxs any alcohol tonight no sir no can I look at your eyes real quick yeah well let's just see how you do okay I do have to hand and with me you representing me that would guarantee that I this doesn't go on my record yes so we charged 85 $500 you could do it in payments why are you do all this we're making a real difference trust me we're doing the Lord's work here if you say so people usually say like what's going on in West Virginia watching some of my videos but it seems like what's going on in New Mexico I hate to go into grocery stores or big box stores I don't mind going out and shopping for antiques but I just feel like going inside physically a grocery store picking food off the shelf putting it in the cart going and paying for it taking it out to the parking lot putting it in the truck driving it home it's all such a waste of my time and that's why I love hellofresh the sponsor of today's video hellofresh is America's number one meal kit they deliver delicious dinner recipes and ingredients right to your door customized to your order it's convenient it gives gives 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while the subscription is active if you're in the US outside the US local discounts will apply now let's get back to the video Thomas clear II the ring leader in what the feds are calling the DWI Enterprise pled guilty to multiple charges in federal court including Rico conspiracy bribery and extortion in his plea agreement clear admits he quote led a scheme that involves numerous sworn law enforcement officers from Albuquerque Police the beralo county sheriff's office in New Mexico State Police Thomas clear uh was also the I forget what his exact title was but he was the head of of like the contractors for the public defenders office at one time too and so he had He was largely connected both politically and also as an attorney this is a widespread issue of systemic corruption the pervasiveness is unexplainable the three of us sitting here at this table today it is not about hey we want money for for these people we want it different how confident are you that the scheme is stopped forever uh sitting here today I'm not confident in that we have this situation for over 30 years now based off of pleas that have been taken in federal court where we're now finding out that this is a decades long corruption Scandal that went unchecked so I first came across this crazy story on YouTube actually I saw where there had been a class action lawsuit that was filed by civil rights attorneys in New Mexico suing everybody who was involved with this Scandal I reached out to those civil rights attorneys and this is my conversation with them they're all based out of Albuquerque this is Taylor Smith Ramone sto and Francis Carpenter you know it was going on for 30 years how was it exposed one or two people had the wherewithal to figure out that it seemed suspect they didn't know that there was a scheme that was ongoing but as soon as the officers who were wrestling him said hey I know a guy that's going to take care of you here's his card in in in addition to giving his card they also their belongings were sent directly to his office as opposed to going through like APD evidence or our evidence here and so there was a couple people all around the same time in 2022 2023 that went to the public defender office and said there's something weird that's going on who do I talk to and I believe it was uh two private attorneys there was uh Mr Damon Eli and also another attorney name Roberta YK uh who then immediately brought it to the FBI's attention and that's when the FBI investigation started sometime I believe in early 2023 so we have uh we have a couple different clients who are are the name plaintiffs and they range from people who actually paid and were part of the scheme in in that regard and there's also people that were you know they attempted to ens snare in the DWI scheme but were successful in avoiding paying Tom clear you know one of the best ones that comes to my mind is is Jose who's one of our named plaintiffs where he wasn't DUI at all they tried to have him contact Tom clear um and he was one of the people that avoided it he wasn't DUI whatsoever they pulled him over with the the sole uh objective of getting him to pay you know into their their scheme and I think his story is really compelling he was a person who had not been drinking for a good amount of time for health reasons and so that's why in the video that was shown in the local news media hey I am not DUI like at all can you guys actually prove this up just from from the beginning he just there was there was a power trip then APD officer honorio Alba told Vasquez he smelled alcohol on his breath obviously I knew that I hadn't been drinking and um well I like I have a mask on how can you smell you have a mask on like what how are you going to you know be smelling the smell of alcohol and the officers treated him much like any other person they interact with they said shut up and get in the car and uh he did um and he ended up doing jail time for it if it was for speeding WR me up for speeding but come on I mean DW my boy's asking for me he's asking for me I want a gay here all his family is here his son is here you know you guys know what drunk people look like do I look like a drunk person right Elba okay that's Sergeant gr confident that you guys will win in court I would love you can all tell he's not have a seat us I almost fell out of my bed cuz I was watching the news that day and and I just I I couldn't believe it and I was like there it is this is it it did have to do with money why would they want to give me an attorney that's ridiculous like what cop is going to arrest you and then try and get you an attorney I was punished before I had a fair trial he ultimately prevailed that trial on the DU DUI claim but again that's you know as you know as a litigator that's months and years of time that's lost in trying to defend yourself for something that just isn't grounded in factor or any type of evidence so we had a a a first person come forward his name is Carlos Smith his uh you know born or his name on his ID is Carlos sandal Smith but he prefers to go by Carlos Smith he came forward and he was one of the first reporters in conjunction with another attorney who is also hearing from these people and so what happened was he contacted the ACLU of New Mexico and our office is a cooperating attorney with their their office and so they sent us over Mr Smith's file and said hey you know take a look and and verify what we're hearing from Mr Smith and see if if you can say you know whether or not this is actually going on so we kind of uh in conjunction with the FBI's investigation did a debrief with Mr Smith and and so we kept digging trying to figure out what more information we could on June 5th 23 Carlos sandal Smith was pulled over by APD officer Joshua Montan for speeding near I25 in central I'm around with APS St first meum yes sir why you going so fast man I apologize I just trying to get over and play my dad okay where you coming from uh downtown any alcohol tonight no sir no can I look at your eyes real quick yeah can you step out real quick despite passing field sobriety tasks and blowing well below the legal limit twice Montano still arrested him for DWI my cousin that' be a good example I shouldn't just bad I'm sorry sir well let's just see how you do okay this is the bad knee so can I do this leg any leg you like okay one23 47 46 45 43 f g h i j k l m m o p q r I do have to give you the opportunity to do a bre okay okay I do have to place you in hand then off camera monano suggested contacting attorney Thomas clear III to make the charge disappear Mr Smith then understanding what was going on surreptitiously recorded the henchmen pargal at clear's office who was quoting him $7500 to $88,500 to make everything go away so let me ask you what is what in your opinion what is my next best step to try and not get this on my record what do you recommend I do if you need to get on for this I do okay you're at the right place if you're one of those people that can live with it then go hire a cheap attorney I cannot um you know cuz there's some out there okay we're not the most expensive okay not the cheapest okay so we charged $8,500 you could do it in payments okay or you can pay $7,500 up front Okay $88,500 OR7 7500 up front Okay 7500 cash if you do payments uh it'll be 85 Plus TX 85 plus tax almost 9,000 okay 85 Plus is that per month or no no uh so it be 8 8,500 plus tax it's almost 9,000 if I do payments yes and how do the payments work so on the payments we ask for 50% down 50% down and so it's like 4,500 okay and that you make either weekly or bi-weekly pays and when do you need that byy whenever you want us to enter and with me you representing me that would guarantee that I this doesn't go on my record yes okay and the odds of me not going with you and going with a public defender what do you s what what do you think about that because I'm not working right now so I don't have an income that's my own issue go ahead roll the dice got it sir he opted for a public defender instead and his case with was dismissed in January of 2024 amid this Federal probe where he helped unravel this Scandal and shortly after we had filed his case I believe it was in August officers started um being placed on administrative leave at a at a exponential rate it it seemed like you know day one there's one officer placed on administrative leave and then there was this Deluge of like the entire DWI task force that was then placed on leave while we were working that case up um those officers were placed on leave and then just in January up until now there have been like these hidden uh pleas that have been taken by the officers and other co-conspirators so after Carlos Smith sort of blew the whistle on this thing the FBI first got to attorney clear's sort of henchmen just like Saul Goodman had this Shady henchman so the henchman Mendes rolls first and he apparently rolls on his boss so everyone gets raided the FBI collects information then just about a month ago in January of this year Mendes pled guilty to eight federal charges including conspiracy then shortly afterwards February 7th just this month former APD officers Joshua Montano and hanor Alba Jr also pleaded guilty to federal charges tied to this investigation the US attorney for New Mexico has indicated that more charges are expected hinting at a broader network of corruption that may stretch across decades and involve many additional police officers many of whom have opted to resign rather than even answer questions about their involvement in this scheme there have been high-profile resignations such as the county unders sheriff on February 24th just a few days ago the full scope of this betrayal of the Public's trust is still unfolding and so it all kind of started with with Mr Smith's case and you know just not turning it away before we did our due diligence and now everything that we had suspicions of are being confirmed through our federal courts I assume you guys have seen the the body cam footage of when clear calls the police that somebody had been inside his house hey boss how you doing scared to death so they the FBI raided my house 3 weeks ago yesterday but I mean that's a big deal that's going on right now um and and I'm scared to death they raided my paralal house yeah um they raided his house hard like the tanks and everything I terrified they didn't K me but they were looking for something your office does have any weapons or anything inside of it I didn't have any weapons in there but my pargal has been with me for 17 years oh and then to top it off yesterday the agents came and took my phone and my laptop to mirror them mhm so I don't have my phone right now if anybody is inside you wish to press charge on them absolutely attention to the residence it's the Albuquerque Police Department anybody inside you under arrest come to the front door make a presence known now in here there's like some old war rifles and stuff or just whatever but they're still here that would have been closed they took a ton of baseballs like signed baseballs yeah but then they were looking for something in here too I see there is a bullet on the ground here there should be no bullet here wow just been the worst of my life my life has gone so upside down and all I've ever done is Love on my clients and help people right especially police officers do we know who was inside his house or whether somebody was inside his house as I'm sure you can see in like some of the YouTube comments or even other social media comments our suspicions are in line with those I mean one of the figures who was in the back of of the house cutting the electrical to it to avoid the alarm looks almost identical to one of the the head officers in this and that's officer Montano I mean you he looks like Captain America and you take his his uh you know officer uh photo and you put it next to to that masked person and it fits the build you know I can't confirm that sitting here today but all the people that were uh shown in the ring camera footage look very much like the cast of characters that we've already sued and so our suspicions are that this was manufactured yeah the first time I saw that I said those are cops you know one of the two of the other people that are in the front of the house while they're approaching Tom clear's house they both look like Rick Mendes huro Alba and Josh mon what would they have been doing my understanding based off of what you've reviewed too is is uh cleaning house uh probably getting R rid of a lot of our paper trail that we were hoping to sink our teeth into as part of Discovery you know as as Tom clear mentions he's like all my files getting back to even my father and my practice are here so I've been practicing since 1982 my dad started practicing at 1956 I have files from 1956 back there wow uh for some reason the burglars knew of my secret stash of files underneath this bench but that's open because who for one it's just a bench how would somebody know that nobody would know that unless but my paralal they were looking for something yeah every cabinet has been opened every drawer um well the only people who knew about that were Tom CLE and his his pargal and maybe the cops too again these are just suspicions at this point but my suspicion is is that they wanted to get rid of any evidence that they could try to make it look like a burglary and hopefully we can't track down each person that they may have done this this to what I'll say is that the circumstantial evidence shows that Rick Mendes rid first by the FBI and then yeah maybe something tipped someone off Tom CLA decided to you know what we're about to get caught but again uh like Taylor said you know these are all suspicions we haven't confirmed anything but it's it's very very very very shady so yes in a way there is a stain on APD but I think that there is the general public who's going to realize that leadership is holding individuals accountable we're not sweeping anything under the carpet and we're making sure that we fully investigate everything uh to the best of our ability if it's not happening at the Top If it's not changing and there isn't any change then we need to get the top out of there that's the problem right why did you know this was happening I mean when you have thousands of cases being dismissed in one year because officers aren't showing up you can't and and you have the judges I mean we all practice criminal defense I was practicing in metro court for years and I was there was chatter about it within attorneys being like this is incredible Thomas clear has an 86% 96% dismissal rate I mean it people knew about it we didn't know why it was happening or what was going on but I think it was just being swept under the rug this is like an onion we have to just keep unfolding it yeah and follow the money to the extent that there's a money Trail but there was a lot of cash payments and Gifts like cars homes vacations tires tires tell me about that uh that was in the was that in the Alba plea Ron it was an noas plea and they would describe the types of um you know either the types of value valuable items that they were exchanged and some of them were homes some of them were tires some of them were jewelry so there was a lot of ways that these officers got paid that wasn't traceable there were people that were coming forward about this um in 2003 and before that um they would report it to APD I mean there there were people that said hey this cop told me and I went to this lawyer's office and you know they were they criminal you know notifying it nothing ever done they should take your area there and you know create some fictional drama about a you know a corrupt lawyer and some corrupt politicians it would probably do well yeah I mean our goal in in this litigation as as Francis has said it earlier is this isn't a money driver this is an impact case where we want to help people out and make sure this doesn't happen again but in terms of going backwards in time and rectifying what happened in the past is you know hopefully we can go back through Discovery figure out where all of these officers touched and Tom clear was involved and and hopefully get some form of expungement for those people that get you know convicted uh without having their fair day it's been interesting a lot of the people that have called I mean one one mother called me and her um you know she was she was so upset with her her son was saying Mom I'm not intox I wasn't drunk I don't I swear to you and the mother just was so upset with him and forced him into a uh to take a fle deal you know because it was an a stain on their family um but the son was adamant that I was not drinking mom and the mom believed the police officer and not her son and you know to hear her crying to me on the phone saying that you know I'm you know hear me my son is grown up and an accomplished um person now and um but you know this really wrecked people's lives if people have I mean if they think that they were a victim of this or if they have information who should they contact to be able to reach out to you guys I would probably say that they should reach out to Ramone sto or Taylor Smith's office office any of our offices but what we're doing is when people are calling us we're putting it in one Central repository that all of our firms are are are working on well I I have a intake questionnaire on on my website they can reach me through there as well uh they could call our offices our offices are you know um filtering through all these potential potential victims uh so we're happy to talk to them as well even if it's a historical claim we're looking at all of them you know obviously these crimes were fraudulently concealed for decades and so doesn't matter how old it is we're happy to talk to anyone I mean this could be playing out for years I think it will we've we've had some people come forward um with historical claims you know that are older than 15 years uh some people have agreed to talk with us some have just said you know what happened to me in the past and they and we've heard varying different um styles of coercion that has been employed at different times by Mendes and other people um and so some people are actually afraid to come forward and and you know anyone who does we're happy to talk with them and if they wish to us not to you know bring up their name or anything like that we're happy to hear from anyone that may give us any other indications of where to look uh even if they want to bring their own claim what do you what do you mean coercion can you expand on that we had a a person come forward who does not want to be a part of it um but he uh informed me in our phone call that when he addressed Mr menend of what he believed to be inappropriate by Tom clear's office Mendes's Mendes had his brother with him and they threatened him with a firearm where is Mendes now I mean is he is he incarcerated or is he out he so he just got granted um he put in an application to um leave the United States to travel abroad the feds allowed it they granted him permission to do that which is shocking to me truly truly shocking that was a no-brainer I mean it's incredible um did he already go we don't know we just we were just made aware of this um this week so well maybe it's gone now what's been shocking is that none of them have been held prior to sentencing um which you know I find it appalling because our clients and the victims did spent time in jail and none of these cops none of not clear not Mendes have stepped foot in in jail and they're the greatest you know risk of flight of any defendant that I could think of currently you know we have we have people that we represent for misun charges and I had one ask the judge hey can I leave the country for a business trip and they said no and it's for a basic firsttime DUI but these people who led a ring lead had a ring lead of of all these terrible schemes now have the leeway to leave if they want and we don't know if he'll come back if he does leave I wouldn't if I were that's I mean he's facing over 80 years in prison you know I just Googled um mendz and it says that he had been arrested it looks like for transporting drugs into the country in the 90s and was convicted of a felony then and clear defended him I guess that's how they met a match made in heaven for them so so I mean he he's already been convicted of a felony for previous trafficking drugs across the border now they let him leave the country on bond that is and this isn't federal court the feds approved it this like you if if this were the plot of like Better Call Saul to you wouldn't believe it because it's just too it's too cliche you know like the lawyer you've got Saul and then you have like his hinch guy just like just like in the show and and and they met because he he represented him when he got caught you know trafficking drugs into the country in the 90s it's bizarre how similar that is real life is is Stranger Than Fiction and I think that's what we're seeing play out every single day as we hear more was there anything else that was just really bizarre I'm going to cut off right there because that deserves a video unto itself this case keeps unraveling and it really is Stranger Than Fiction each new update is just more and more bizarre there's tons more to the interview this is just too complicated of a situation for just one video what I think they need you to know as soon as possible though is if you received a DWI or you you think you may have been involved in this Scandal that went back possibly to the 90s reach out to these lawyers I will put their contact information um in the first pin comment below and at the blog post that is connected to this video definitely intend to stay in touch with these guys and get all the juicy details hopefully as they come out they're very very early on in the litigation they haven't received any Discovery yet haven't taken any depositions yet so there's lots lots more information to come so you can follow along by subscribing both here and at the blog at the civils lawyer.com I foresee many future videos on this which is one of the most insane things I've ever done a video on or or seen in general remember our rights don't end where your fear begins freedom is scary deal with it