A Department of Homeland Security agent working in Utah is accused of convincing a confidential source to sell the synthetic drug bath salts on the street in exchange for profit from the illegal side hustle.
The FBI arrested the agent, David Cole, on Dec. 6 after the confidential source came forward, worried that the bath salt sales he was directed to do were unlawful. He had been incarcerated on drug charges when he was recruited as a legitimate source and began working for Homeland Security investigators upon his release, the federal complaint states.
According to court documents, Cole and another agent who was not named in the complaint are estimated to have “profited approximately $150,000 to $300,000 in illegal proceeds” from the operation.
The confidential source’s initial Homeland Security recruitment was aboveboard, the complaint indicates. Other agents were involved in his recruitment and ongoing handling, and he engaged in “legitimate, successful drug buys involving individuals who were illegally purchasing drugs.”
But in spring, Cole allegedly approached the source about the separate “arrangement” to sell bath salts, a stimulant that sometimes has hallucinogenic properties. According to the complaint, the source was required to pay Cole or the unnamed agent $5,000 to procure the drugs, then directed to sell them to contacts the source “had in the community.”
The agents allowed the source to keep the estimated $10,000 he would sell the drugs for, the complaint says.
This arrangement, according to the complaint, happened once or twice a week in Utah alongside what appeared to be legitimate drug buy operations coordinated with other Homeland Security agents.
Cole or the unnamed agent would meet the source to exchange the bath salts at locations including a local Shake Shack, Panera Bread, Smith’s grocery, Harmons Grocery and a Nike store, the complaint states.
During the bath salts operations, though, neither of the agents arrested anyone who purchased the drugs, the confidential source told investigators, and they didn’t give the source any recording devices or other equipment to gather information on buyers.
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Department of Homeland Security offices in West Valley City, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024.
The source also noted that neither Cole nor the other agent seemed to track the amount of bath salts sold, and all communications between the source, Cole and the other agent happened on Signal, an end-to-end encrypted texting app.
In late October, the source met with FBI investigators to report the bath salts “scheme,” the complaint states. That’s when the FBI began monitoring eight bath salt buys involving either Cole or the other agent.
Evidence suggests that Cole and the other agent “conspired and worked together to execute this scheme, regardless of which one of them actually appears at the buy location,” the complaint states. At one point, the agents and the source also discussed potentially creating a website to sell bath salts, the complaint states.
The confidential source cooperated with the FBI “for monetary value” and “out of fear for his personal safety” if he continued following Cole and the other agent’s directives, the complaint notes.
FBI agents on Dec. 4 and 5 executed warrants on the pair and their homes, their government vehicles, their work phones, their Homeland Security cubicles and a safety deposit box. They say they found evidence to support the source’s reports, including more than $67,000 in cash and what appeared to be more bath salts.
Agents believe at least some of the bath salts Cole sold to the source had been procured from product that law enforcement in “a different geographical area” had previously seized, the complaint states.
Cole was arrested on one count of conspiracy to distribute — and possession with intent to distribute — a controlled substance. He initially appeared in court Monday, after which his complaint was unsealed. He is set to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dustin B. Pead for a detention hearing on Friday.
Cole and the unnamed agent have not been terminated as Homeland Security Investigation employees, but their credentials were suspended, the complaint states.
Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Wyn Hornbuckle, the deputy director of the Office of Public Affairs for the U.S. Department of Justice, declined to comment on the case Tuesday, citing its ongoing prosecution.
