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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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040389
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04038900.034
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1990-09-22
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NATION, Page 24DEA Don JuanHow a coke Casanova turned 'em on and turned 'em in
One day in November 1987, Olga Gonzalez, 30, was stopped at a
traffic light in Miami Beach when a black Corvette piloted by a
man with a touch of gray hair pulled alongside. After a brief
conversation, she exchanged phone numbers with the charming driver,
Mario Rodolfo Portell. He called that night to ask her out, and
before long Gonzalez had fallen in love. It was an affair to
remember. At Portell's urging, Gonzalez arranged to purchase a
kilogram of cocaine through an acquaintance. But federal drug
agents busted her and the dealer, and she is now serving a
seven-year prison term.
Score yet another triumph for the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration's very own Casanova of cocaine. Over the past 1 1/2
years, the handsome 34-year-old Cuban emigre has used a turn-'em-on
and turn-'em-in technique to entice some 18 Florida and New Jersey
women into setting up drug deals that led to their arrest. Instead
of targeting street-level dealers and wholesale drug salesmen,
Portell promised love and occasionally marriage if the women, most
with no prior criminal record, would only set up a cocaine buy.
When the deals went down, DEA agents were on hand to make an
arrest. Defense lawyers charge that Portell's undercover work, for
which the DEA has paid him $73,000, amounts to entrapment.
Federal prosecutors maintain that they did not have complete
knowledge of how Portell concocted his stings, which began in 1987,
after he was arrested in New Jersey for writing bad checks. But in
the case of Isabel Garcia of Elizabeth, N.J., her defense lawyer
has collected memos from authorities in Union County, N.J., showing
that the DEA has been aware of Portell's seductive modus operandi
since at least the fall of 1987. Garcia loaned Portell $8,700,
which he returned in the form of bad checks. She claims she
arranged a coke deal only because Portell promised to repay her
with the proceeds from the sale. Last week she agreed to plead
guilty to possession of coke.
The jig may now be up for the DEA gigolo, thanks to hair-salon
owner Miriam Guzman. Portell met her when she was sitting alone and
lonely in a Florida restaurant, dated her, borrowed money from her
and asked her to set up a coke deal. Guzman's first trial ended in
a hung jury last fall. Since then her attorney has been gathering
evidence in an effort to prove official misconduct. At a hearing
to dismiss charges against Guzman last month, Miami Federal Judge
William Hoeveler posed a pointed query: "Is there any question in
anybody's mind that this man is not only a thief but a scoundrel?"
After defense attorneys began compiling Portell's history, the DEA
removed him from its payroll. Guzman, who returns to court this
week, may not be the last woman to fall for the dashing Don Juan.
But she may be the last one he turns into a suspect statistic in
the war on drugs.